The RRN Research Digest provides a synopsis of recent research on refugee and forced migration issues from entities associated with the RRN and others.

You can download the digest in PDF format here: RRN Research Digest

No. 185 | October 1, 2026

NEW RESEARCH AND PUBLICATIONS

Ghorashi, H., & Ghorashi. (2026). Transformative engaged scholarship in migration: Toward a co-creative, caring, and reflexive migration studies. Springer. Open access book. This open access book centers the everyday experiences of forced and undocumented migrants in the Global North and Global South – specifically, the Netherlands, USA, and South Africa – through the prisms of engaged scholarship and co-creation as well as through transformative research processes within the field of migration studies. It goes beyond general definitions of engaged scholarship to describe how academics/researchers realized co-creation through meaningful collaboration with forced migrants in the three countries, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. The book teases out contextual differences between the countries while connecting to broader debates on forced migration, ethics of care, complexities of engaged scholarship, and community networks and well-being as well as the politics of knowledge production on forced migration and reflexive migration studies. With its range of empirical work, this book is a great resource for students at all levels, academics in migration and refugee studies, policy makers in the three countries, and members of forced migrant communities.

Velluti, S. (2026). Towards a Global Cooperation and Solidarity Framework for Climate (Im)mobility. McGill Journal of Sustainable Development Law Vol. 22, Issue 1, pp. 45-101. Open access book. Drawing on the principle of common concern of humankind (CCH), as first adopted by the 1992 UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), and the concept of equal human dignity, this article proposes a solidarity-based global framework for governing climate (im) mobility. It advances a rights-driven approach that brings together the right to a healthy environment (R2HE) and key UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Rather than creating a new, singular category of “climate migrant,” the article argues for an integrated legal architecture capable of responding to the diverse drivers, needs, aspirations, risks and vulnerabilities that shape climate (im)mobility. It emphasizes international cooperation as essential in delivering justice-oriented solutions for both climate migrants and communities unable to move, particularly in the face of existing governance and protection gaps. The contribution of the proposed framework lies in building on existing international and European legal instruments and developments, bridging distinct fields of law, and combining prescriptive and facilitative obligations rather than establishing a wholly separate regime for climate (im)mobility.

Kaur, G. (2025). Intersecting Nation-Building and Gender Marginalisation: Tibetan Women in Exile and the Role of Governance in Body Politics. Asian Studies Review, 49(4), 818–835. Tibetan women in exile face the dual challenges of patriarchy and nationalism, where the collective needs of an exiled community often overshadow women’s individual rights, health concerns, and aspirations. These challenges thus reinforce gender-based marginalisation. This article critically examines the intersection of nation-building, family planning, reproduction, and body politics, focusing on the relationship between the exiled government and Tibetan women. It critically analyses the effects of exile governance on women and the gendered impacts of nationalist policies in displaced communities.

Sasakura, K. (2026). Competing faces of citizenship beyond naturalization: Hmong refugees and the politics of recognition in the United States after the Vietnam War. Genealogy, 10(4), 123. Open access. This paper explores the historical relationship between refugee administration and refugees’ negotiations over citizenship through an analysis of Hmong refugees’ experiences in the United States. During the Vietnam War, approximately 50,000 Hmong soldiers were mobilized into the CIA-backed guerrilla unit as part of US anti-communist operations. Following the communist victory in 1975, Hmong refugees from Laos fled to Thailand and were later resettled in the United States. This research enriches the historiography of broader immigration, citizenship, and military studies by reconceptualizing refugee incorporation as a contested process of recognition rather than a linear path to national membership, while relativizing contemporary worldviews surrounding refugee protection, immigrant soldiers, and military naturalization.

REPORTS AND POLICY BRIEFS

Aid Worker Security Report 2026 – When the threat is the state: Detentions of humanitarian workers. (2026). reliefweb. This year’s Aid Worker Security Report presents the latest verified statistics on violence and other major security incidents affecting aid workers worldwide, with data drawn from the Humanitarian Outcomes Aid Worker Security Database (AWSD). In addition to the global update on data trends, this edition focuses on the growing phenomenon of aid worker detentions by state actors, informed by 29 key informant interviews and numerous other consultations with humanitarian practitioners and security experts over the past year.

Assessing the impact of the Global Statelessness Fund on resourcing and decision-making power for affected communities in the Asia-Pacific. (2026). Humanitarian Practice Network. Statelessness remains a serious and widespread human rights challenge globally. The findings of this article highlight that funding alone cannot overcome the structural and political barriers faced by stateless communities and their advocates. Restrictive regulatory environments, political sensitivities surrounding citizenship policies and broader patterns of discrimination continue to shape the context in which advocacy takes place. Nevertheless, initiatives such as the Global Statelessness Fund demonstrate how flexible funding and participatory governance can contribute to strengthening a more inclusive and community-led movement to address statelessness.

High-Level Policy Dialogue on Mobility, Environment and Climate Change in the East and Horn of Africa. (2026). Mixed Migration Centre. This synthesis report presents the outcomes of the High-Level Policy Dialogue on Mobility, Environment and Climate Change in the East and Horn of Africa, convened in Nairobi on 3–4 June 2026 by the Government of Kenya’s National Coordination Mechanism on Migration (NCM) and the Mixed Migration Centre (MMC).

Migration Diplomacy in an Age of Transactionalism by Lawrence Huang, Kate Hooper, and Meghan Benton. (2026). Migration Policy Institute. A changing geopolitical risk environment has weakened international cooperation on migration. Overlapping crises have created new situations of mass displacement, yet concrete solutions remain out of reach. Fragility, conflict, and growing authoritarianism in some key countries of origin or transit—such as Egypt, El Salvador, Niger, and Tunisia—are impeding effective cooperation on migration issues. However, as international cooperation frays, balanced diplomacy—rather than coercive dealmaking—promises the most effective approach to emerging migration challenges.

Resettlement as a Lifeline: Canada, UNHCR and the Protection of At-Risk Refugees. (2026). UNHCR Canada. This report provides a window into the protection risks faced by the refugees that UNHCR refers to Canada for resettlement consideration demonstrating the important role Canada’s government-assisted refugee program plays in protecting refugees. By analyzing registration and case data, the report highlights the diversity of nationalities and locations from where refugees are referred to Canada as well as the protection needs behind these referrals, including those facing legal or physical protection needs, survivors of violence and women and girls at risk. The report also highlights Canada’s Human Rights Defender (HRD) and Urgent Protection Program (UPP) streams and the areas of advocacy of the HRDs referred to Canada and the serious protection threats facing the refugees referred under the UPP.

NEWS AND BLOG POSTS

DRC: Humanitarian needs surging as Ebola spreads and El Niño looms. reliefweb. The twin threat of Ebola and El Niño in the Democratic Republic of Congo risks deepening an already dire humanitarian crisis, CARE International warns. The warning comes as a new report projects as many as 10,000 people in the DRC could die as a result of additional heat brought by the super El Niño in the next six months.

Fatal building collapse highlights dangers plaguing Gaza nearly a year after ceasefire by Wafaa Shurafa and Sam Metz, September 20, 2026. Los Angeles Times. The deadly collapse of a multistory building in Gaza has drawn new attention to the hardships facing Palestinians there nearly a year after a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas promised to kick-start reconstruction.

From Military Rule to Arakan Army: The Dilemma of Rohingya Repatriation by Sakhawat Sajjat Sejan and Raspiatur Rashpi, September 14, 2026. Refugee Law Initiative. As Myanmar shifts from junta control to armed fragmentation, the promise of Rohingya repatriation turns into a fragile illusion—where law, politics, and humanity collide.

South Sudan’s Green Book law brings harsh justice, but little lasting peace by Francis Michael Awang and Mabor Riak, September 22, 2026. The New Humanitarian. A controversial law that treats harsh punishment as a remedy for insecurity in two South Sudanese states has failed to stem conflict and led to a spate of human rights abuses, according to activists and local community leaders.

Super El Niño threatens to push 8 million children into acute hunger across East and Southern Africa by early 2027., September 21, 2026. Save the Children. About 8 million children across East and Southern Africa could face acute hunger by early 2027, a rise of 30%, as one of the strongest El Nino weather events in recent years fuels a growing food crisis, according to new analysis by Save the Children.

EVENTS, RESOURCES, DIGITAL AND SOCIAL MEDIA

Event: Sustaining Intangible Cultural Practices in Contexts of Forced Displacement |10 August – 25 September, online (asynchronous). Griffith University. People with lived experience of forced displacement are warmly invited to participate in an International Working Symposium connected to the Worldwide Universities Network project “Sustaining Intangible Cultural Practices in Contexts of Forced Displacement”, led by Griffith University. This international project brings together researchers, cultural agencies, and people with lived experience of forced displacement to help shape research, policy, and practice in this area. The symposium for people with lived experience of forced displacement will take place asynchronously from 10 August to 25 September via the online research platform Recollective. The outcomes of this symposium will inform a UNHCR- commissioned report on approaches to supporting refugee cultural heritage and cultural rights.

Event: Beyond Emergency Care: Integrating Oral Health into Refugee Health Systems. CRS Seminar Series. Guest speaker: Mannat Tiwana, CRS Affiliated Scholar. This seminar will examine the growing evidence linking oral health with chronic diseases, maternal health, mental health, and quality of life in refugee populations. It will also explore why oral health has remained overlooked within humanitarian responses despite its significant health and social consequences. This seminar is on October 6th, 2026, 10:00AM – 11:30AM, online.

Event: After Chișinău and the EU Pact on Asylum and Migration: Human Rights. The ECHR and Migration. In the context of growing political pressure to restrict the already very limited rights of refugees and migrants, this webinar will examine the Council of Europe’s May 2016 Chișinău Declaration and the EU Pact on Asylum and Migration of June 2016. The speakers will consider recent legal developments and whether existing legal safeguards embedded in international and domestic law remain capable of protecting the rights of refugees and migrants in a challenging political climate. This webinar will be on October 7, 2026, 17:00-18:00 GMT.

Podcast: “Lebanon Between Refuge, Displacement and Exile Within the Homeland: Geographies of Recurrent Displacement,”. TAHJEER. The episode with speakers, Dr. Jasmin Lilian Diab, Director of the Institute for Migration Studies at the Lebanese American University, and Dr. Oroub El-Abed, Adjunct Associate Professor, at Birzeit University, examines Lebanon as a space where multiple forms of displacement have accumulated over decades: protracted Palestinian refuge, repeated internal displacement, Syrian displacement, migration under economic collapse, and the more recent waves of forced movement from South Lebanon, the Bekaa and Beirut’s southern suburbs. This podcast is in Arabic.

Resource: Statelessness: A Web Research Guide. Forced Migration Current Awareness. This guide provides an overview of ‘statelessness’, such as definitions, statistics, and sources.

The RRN Research Digest provides a synopsis of recent research on refugee and forced migration issues from entities associated with the RRN and others.

You can download the digest in PDF format here: RRN Research Digest

No. 184 | September 17, 2026

Dear readers, we’re thrilled to welcome you to another year of the RRN Research Digest! Thank you so much for your continued support and contributions. As always, if you would like to include a submission for one of our issues, please email us at rrndigest@yorku.ca.

Warmly,

RRN Research Digest Team

NEW RESEARCH AND PUBLICATIONS

Gül Ince-Beqo. (2026). Diasporic marginalities and the second-best destination. Springer Nature Singapore. Open access book. This open access book examines Turkish and Kurdish settlement in Italy, an under-studied “second-best destination” within Europe’s stratified mobility regime. Centering a context long overshadowed by Northern European hubs, it shows how border governance, legal status, segmented labour markets, and welfare arrangements combine to shape migrant lives at the margins of the continent’s more resourced receiving societies. Drawing on decade-long ethnographic fieldwork and more than 100 interviews with families and second-generation young adults, the book traces trajectories of arrival, through asylum, irregular transit, family reunification, and work networks, and the gradual consolidation of lives in which onward-migration remains a live horizon.

Krause, U., Joshua, G. N., & Schmidt, H. (2026a). Refugee-led organizations in Uganda: Agency, Gender, and politics of self-organizing in exile. McGill-Queen’s University Press. Open access book. Self-organization plays an essential yet often overlooked role in the everyday lives of refugees in exile. By self-organizing, they challenge restrictions, claim political representation, foster social relations and belonging, and create ongoing economic opportunities. While government authorities and aid organizations are supposed to provide protection and assistance, refugees often continue to face adversities, restrictions, and risks, prompting them to establish and maintain their own support systems. Refugee-Led Organizations in Uganda offers nuanced insight into the problems arising from the aid system and especially the significance of the spectrum of informal and formalized self-organizations.

Dziadyk, N. (2026). Displaced citizenship: War-driven political action and temporalities of displacement among Ukrainians. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 1–18. Open access. Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 led to the displacement of millions of people, many of whom fled abroad, grappling with survivor guilt and seeking ways to remain part of Ukraine’s fight. To capture these dynamics, the article develops the analytical lens of displaced citizenship. Rather than approaching displacement as a background condition, displaced citizenship foregrounds how urgency, rupture, and uncertainty become constitutive of political subjectivity. It shows how the immediacy of forced movement, grief, separation, and enduring concerns for those left behind generate moral and political obligations, while uncertainty about protection, return, emplacement, and societal reception shapes how displaced persons navigate political action in receiving societies. In doing so, the article contributes to debates on migration, citizenship, and political participation by recentring the temporalities of displacement in the study of political engagement.

Noor, A. & Yunis, M. (2026). From data to power: centring displaced women in climate and humanitarian decision-making. Humanitarian Exchange Magazine, 87. Open access. Climate-related disasters are becoming more frequent and severe, increasing displacement in fragile, conflict-affected areas. In refugee-hosting regions such as Dadaab and Hagadera in Garissa County, Kenya, extended periods of drought, unpredictable rainfall and flooding directly influence daily survival. Nevertheless, humanitarian interventions are impeded by inadequate data-collection systems and the ongoing marginalisation of the most severely impacted populations, especially displaced women and girls. The lack of gender-specific and intersectional data transcends technical issues, revealing fundamental structural inequalities in the processes of knowledge creation, validation and application. By referencing examples from Kenya, this article explores how refugee women-led organisations are innovating climate response strategies through co-design, participatory data systems and genuine engagement.

Schulz, P. (2026). Love in a “hopeless” place? courtship, intimacy, and Romance in displacement. Journal of Refugee Studies. Open access. Even in the midst of war and displacement, love persists. Yet, these lived realities remain mostly absent from refugee studies and from the vast body of literature on mass internal displacement and encampment in northern Uganda specifically. In this article, the author documents different narratives of romance, intimacy, love, and compassion in the context of Ugandan IDP camps and situate those accounts alongside a recognition of the harms caused by a decade of mass forced displacement, including their profound disruption of social-moral-intimate orders.

REPORTS AND POLICY BRIEFS

New UNDP assessment charts a path towards more accessible legal aid systems for forcibly displaced people. (2026). UNDP. A new regional assessment released today by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), with support from the German Government, finds that Armenia, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine have made important progress in strengthening access to state-guaranteed legal aid for forcibly displaced people. However, significant barriers continue to prevent many from fully exercising their rights.

Jurisprudence related to LGBTIQ Applicants in International Protection. (2026). European Union Agency for Asylum. This fact sheet provides an overview of recent case law related to the assessment of international protection claims based on sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression and sex characteristics (SOGIESC).

Thailand Accepts Its Status as a Migrant Hub, but Workers Face Precarious Conditions. (2026). Migration Policy Institute. Thailand is a regional magnet for migration and the most popular destination for labor migrants in the Mekong subregion of Southeast Asia. As several sectors of its economy have grown reliant on workers from neighboring countries, the government has tried to formalize its labor migration system. While providing rights and protections on paper, however, policies have deepened migrant workers’ marginalization without offering access to permanent settlement or eliminating barriers to social and political integration.

The Humanitarian Funding Gap in Chad: Implications for Vulnerable Populations. (2026). SIPRI. In 2024, SIPRI and its partner BUCOFORE carried out research showing that refugee women and girls in the Chad–Sudan border region face considerable threats to their safety, and existing protection measures are inadequate. The research also found that humanitarian funding in Chad remains insufficient to match the scale of need. Incorporating insights from seminars held in 2026, this fact sheet expands on three key findings from the research: the humanitarian funding gap in Chad compromises the transition to resilience; it weakens protection mechanisms; and it undermines the safety and dignity of refugee women. The fact sheet aims to guide donors in their decision making and support targeted, effective interventions that boost local resilience and refugee integration.

Transition of Refugee Services in East Africa. (2026). International Rescue Committee. Across East Africa, governments and their partners are transitioning the delivery of refugee health services from parallel humanitarian systems toward national health systems. This shift reflects commitments under the Comprehensive Refugee Response Framework (CRRF) and the Global Compact on Refugees (GCR), and is driven by protracted displacement, mounting pressure on humanitarian budgets and ambitions for the socioeconomic inclusion of refugees. The recommendations set out how donors, governments and partners can safeguard predictable financing, workforce continuity and specialized care before responsibility shifts, so that integration strengthens national systems.

NEWS AND BLOG POSTS

AI age assessment: why it puts child asylum-seekers at risk by Jessica Hagen-Zanker, Carmen Leon-Himmelstine, Rachel Marcus, September 3, 2026. ODI Global. Age assessment of unaccompanied young asylum-seekers is one of the most controversial aspects of the asylum system. Immigration officers have life-changing decisions to make – asylum-seekers deemed under the age of 18 receive additional support and safeguarding provisions, while those assessed as adults face stricter accommodation dispersal and standard immigration controls.

Between Protection and Precarity: Progress, Limits and Deficiencies of Asylum Governance in Taiwan by Yen-Rong Lai and Lili Song, September 9, 2026. Refugee Law Initiative. In conversations about refugee protection in Asia, Taiwan rarely comes up. Yet Taiwan has a long history of hosting refugees and asylum seekers, including those fleeing the People’s Republic of China (PRC) since 1949, Indochinese refugees in the 1970s and 1980s and Hong Kong activists seeking refuge since 2019. Today, the largest group  seeking protection in Taiwan are Myanmar nationals. Taiwan has proactively incorporated major UN human rights treaties; however, to date, it has not established a formalised, predictable framework for refugee protection.

Can Haiti Handle an Influx of Deportees From the U.S.? by Gene Kuleta, Daniel Maffey, and Luiza Franca, September 2, 2026. The Dialogue. A U.S. district judge in Washington confirmed on Aug. 5 that Temporary Protected Status for Haitian migrants was no longer shielded by the court order that had kept it in place. The Trump administration resumed deportation flights two weeks later and can now strip legal status and work authorization from as many as 350,000 Haitians. The developments came as Haiti continues to grapple with gang violence, political instability and food insecurity. How realistic is it for Haiti to absorb a large-scale return of its citizens given the current security and humanitarian situation in the country? What capacity does the Haitian state have to receive, resettle and protect returnees amid gang control of large parts of the capital? What risks does the situation pose for Haiti’s stability in the months ahead?

What 13 minutes in Nepal can teach us about acting before disaster strikes by Jessica Alexander, September 9, 2026. The New Humanitarian. Rajendra Dawadi had to make a decision in an instant. Warned that floodwaters were racing towards his school in Nepal’s Trishuli Valley, the headmaster had no way of knowing how much time he had, nor whether the floodwaters would reach his school. He did not hesitate and evacuated more than 900 students and 16 staff to higher ground.

18,500 Displaced in 72 Hours as Fighting Flares Across Yemen West Coast, September 7, 2026. IOM UN Migration. Renewed hostilities along Yemen’s western coast and in parts of Taiz and Al-Hodeidah have forced thousands of people from their homes, with civilians reportedly among those killed and injured as clashes intensify.

EVENTS, RESOURCES, DIGITAL AND SOCIAL MEDIA

Podcast: Forced From Home Episode 10: A Seat at the Table: Advancing Meaningful Inclusion of Refugee Leaders with Dr. Hourie Tafech. Refugees International. In this episode, we hear from Refugees International’s own Dr. Hourie Tafech about her own refugee leadership journey and the evolution of the global refugee-led movement. She discusses the crucial role refugee leaders have played in shaping international humanitarian policy decisions and the UN Refugee Agency’s operations. She offers ideas to advance meaningful refugee participation across global platforms and measure the impact of refugee inclusion.

Podcast: Rethinking Humanitarianism | Somalia’s plan to break free from aid dependence. The New Humanitarian. For Abdihakim Ainte, a senior Somali government official, the international humanitarian system’s sudden contraction has been both a “cataclysmic” shock – with devastating immediate consequences – and a reckoning that could ultimately accelerate Somalia’s path towards greater self-reliance.

Podcast: Rethinking Humanitarianism | Will aid-for-hire become the new normal? The New Humanitarian. In the previous collaborative episode between Rethinking Humanitarianism and Start Network, Fogbow CEO Brook Jerue questioned why the aid sector was so “infatuated” and critical of his company – a small private American firm delivering aid in high‑conflict contexts like South Sudan and Gaza. In this follow‑up episode, host Tammam Aloudat speaks with Beatrice Lindstrom – co‑author of a recent policy brief on the rise of privatised, militarised, and politicised aid actors – to situate Fogbow within the larger context of these emerging operators, and to examine why their growing “subsumption” of professional humanitarian roles deserves closer scrutiny.

Event: CRS/CERLAC/YCAR Floor Party. Start the academic year by connecting with the vibrant communities at the Centre for Refugee Studies, the Centre for Research on Latin America and the Caribbean and the York Centre for Asian Research! Join us for an afternoon of conversation, connection and community. Come meet fellow students, faculty and researchers-light snacks will be served! This will be on September 23, 2026 at 2:00PM-3:00PM ET at Common Area, Eighth Floor, Kaneff Tower, Keele Campus, York University.

Event: CRS Film Screening: When the water horse seeks a new home. This film is part of a project on Theorising (im)mobilities at sea: Challenging the terra firma bias in Refugee Studies through human maritime movements. This will be on September 24, 2026, at 1:00PM – 2:30PM at HNES 140 (note: this is an in person event only), Keele campus, York University. The guest speaker will be Antje Missbach, Professor of Sociology at Bielefeld University.

The RRN Research Digest provides a synopsis of recent research on refugee and forced migration issues from entities associated with the RRN and others.

You can download the digest in PDF format here: RRN Research Digest

No. 183 | May 7, 2026

Dear RRN Research Digest readers, this will be our last issue of the semester. Thank you so much for your readership, contributions, and support. We will be returning in September; if you have any comments or feedback, please do email us at rrndigest@yorku.ca. We hope you have a lovely summer!

Sincerely,

RRN Research Digest Team

NEW RESEARCH AND PUBLICATIONS

Dustin, M., Ferreira, N., Matin, K., Rezaei-Toroghi, M., & Soloaga, I. (2026). Decolonizing Queer Migration: Iranian voices in exile. Bristol University Press. Open access book. This book offers an unprecedented study of how forced migration shapes gender and sexual identities, focusing on queer Iranian individuals. The authors explore how they negotiate, express and reframe their identities across different stages of exile and resettlement.

Krause, U., Joshua, G. N., & Schmidt, H. (2026). Refugee-led organizations in Uganda: Agency, Gender, and politics of self-organizing in exile. McGill-Queen’s University Press. Open access book. Self-organization plays an essential yet often overlooked role in the everyday lives of refugees in exile. By self-organizing, they challenge restrictions, claim political representation, foster social relations and belonging, and create ongoing economic opportunities. While government authorities and aid organizations are supposed to provide protection and assistance, refugees often continue to face adversities, restrictions, and risks, prompting them to establish and maintain their own support systems. Refugee-Led Organizations in Uganda offer nuanced insight into the problems arising from the aid system and especially the significance of the spectrum of informal and formalized self-organizations. Ulrike Krause, Gato Ndabaramiye Joshua, and Hannah Schmidt draw on a gender-sensitive understanding of relational agency and situated knowledge and use empirical research in Uganda’s camp Kyaka II and the capital, Kampala, to reveal how individuals collectively contribute to their own support in times of emergency and in everyday life.

Haugen, S., McNally, R., & Hallstrom, L. (2026). Supporting Refugees in Rural Canada: Exploring the Strengths and Weaknesses of Settlement Service Models in Smaller Communities. Refuge: Canada’s Journal on Refugees, 41(1), 1–19. This article demonstrates how refugee integration is supported in rural and small communities across Canada. We conducted virtual focus groups and interviews with 40 participants across the country who support refugees through settlement organizations, sponsorship groups, and other networks. The article outlines six participant-identified models of settlement services and explores the benefits, challenges, and limitations of and potential improvements for each model. These models highlight the mix of formal and informal supports existing in rural places and the urban focus of Canada’s settlement system. Recommendations include adequate funding of settlement services in smaller communities and engaging with rural service providers.

Lillevik, R. (2026). The Evolution of Vulnerability in Norwegian Refugee Debates: Semantic and Political Changes over Four Decades. Refuge: Canada’s Journal on Refugees, 42(1), 1–19. This study traces how vulnerability emerged as a key concept in Norwegian refugee policy from the 1980s to the 2020s. Using Koselleck’s conceptual history framework, it analyzes seven major legislative and policy debates. The findings show a shift from systemic understandings of displacement to individualized assessments of risk, reinforcing hierarchies of deservingness. Vulnerability liberalized asylum procedures but also legitimized restrictive policies, favouring resettled refugees over asylum seekers. The study highlights how this concept operates as both a moral and a political tool, shaping refugee priorities while narrowing political responsibility for global displacement.

Noori, S., & Baroud, J. (2025). Leveraging EdTech in Creating Refugee-Inclusive Classrooms in Canada. Education Sciences, 15(11), 1473-1490. Open access. As Canada experiences a growing number of newcomer students with refugee backgrounds, K-12 educators face challenges to meet students’ unique academic, linguistic, and psychosocial needs. This paper examines the role of educational technology (EdTech) to bridge the resource and training gap by enhancing teacher preparedness through an accessible, inclusive, and trauma-informed digital resource. Findings suggest that successful EdTech for refugee-background student initiatives must be trauma-informed, strength-based, culturally responsive, and designed with usability and accessibility in mind. Furthermore, collaboration between K-12 educators, researchers, and developers is vital to ensure that there is alignment of pedagogy and technology.

REPORTS AND POLICY BRIEFS

Compounding Returns: A Study On Remittance Loss and The Cost Of Deportations in Afghanistan. (2026). Reliefweb. Deportations are rising at the same time that humanitarian resources are tightening. Communities that relied on migration and remittances to bridge chronic poverty are now facing abrupt income loss, escalating debt and layered shocks (including climate related disruption), with many households moving quickly from precarious self-reliance into acute need. This study provides ground-level evidence of how forced returns are reshaping household economies, community support systems, and where the pressure points translate to protection risks.

Infrastructuring pathways: traversing the legal infrastructure of mobility in South America by Andrea Jiménez Laurence. (2026). Centre of Excellence for Global Mobility Law. Human mobility is as complex as the legal regimes that govern it, demanding an approach that extends beyond migration and refugee law to include temporary, pendular, and extralegal dynamics of movement. This paper adopts the lens of legal infrastructures to analyse how law and mobility co-constitute each other in South America’s diverse mobility pathways. The analysis shows that movement and the interaction of multiple regimes continuously (re)configure a legal infrastructure that both enables and constrains mobility, capturing how law shapes mobility, and how mobility, in turn, reshapes law.

Refugee Access to Higher Education in Canada: A Case Study of the Afghan Newcomer Community in British Columbia- Final Report by Noori, S., Mohamed, A., Safi, I., & Naikmal, M. (2026). Safi Association for Humanity. This research study investigates the obstacles in accessing higher education for newcomer Afghans in British Columbia (BC), Canada. The aim of this project is to find out what these barriers are through surveys and focus groups. This report highlights the preliminary findings presented in the surveys. The goal of this study is to provide insights and recommendations for enhancing Afghan refugee access to higher education in Canada, with a focus on BC’s education system at the end of study. This research project will also provide data regarding public education and community-based support services and resources available to these newcomers in their journeys towards post-secondary education.

The Impact of Temporary Migration Status on Access to Refuge in Victoria, Australia: Barriers to Safety and Support. (2026). The University of Melbourne. In this report we detail findings from our examination of the impact of temporary migration status on access to refuge in Victoria. Our findings suggest that concerns noted by the Victorian Royal Commission into Family Violence (RCFV) in 2016 remain largely unchanged – that is, that temporary visa holders have limited access to refuge due to the conditions attached to their visas. This report presents findings that identify the challenges that Victorian refuges manage in supporting temporary visa holders and highlights areas where reform at the national and state level could alleviate these challenges to ensure all women have equal access to safety.

Transit Migration: The Impact of Changes in US Immigration Policies on Central American and Mexican Transit Countries. (2026). Institute for the Study of International Migration. This report, a joint endeavor of Georgetown’s Institute for the Study of International Migration and the Center for Latin American Studies and supported by The Americas Institute, examines the impact of changes in US policies on the transit countries with particular attention to the cuts in US assistance, the closing of the US border, deportations and the likely taxation of remittances sent home by migrants.

NEWS AND BLOG POSTS

MSF DRC: New wave of violence in Ituri deepens humanitarian crisis, May 4, 2026. Reliefweb. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s (DRC) northeastern province of Ituri, Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders (MSF) teams are witnessing the impact of renewed violence on civilians wounded by gunfire, survivors of sexual violence unable to access appropriate care, and families forced to flee. Since February 2026, MSF has treated thousands of patients in the town of Fataki. Despite these efforts, the broader response remains drastically insufficient given the scale of needs.

On the Pacific coast, a perilous reverse migration route surges, only to disappear by Joshua Collins, April 28, 2026. The New Humanitarian. Jaqué, Juradó, Bahía Solano. The towns are like an archipelago starting on Panama’s Pacific coast and continuing down into Colombia. Impoverished, isolated, and far from the beaten path, they are unlikely – and dangerous – places for the effects of US President Donald Trump’s harsh migration policies to land. But for several months last year, that’s exactly what happened.

Somalia hunger crisis worsens as drought displaces more than 500,000 people, April 27, 2026. Aljazeera. Across Somalia, communities are suffering through a deepening hunger crisis, driven from their homes by drought and left waiting for critical humanitarian assistance that has not arrived. September’s failed Deyr rains mark the latest blow in a relentless climate crisis, destroying livelihoods, killing livestock, and forcing another year of harvest failure. More than 500,000 people have been displaced so far this year – more than 90 percent of them by drought – in addition to the 3.3 million Somalis already uprooted.

Two Sides of Japan’s Immigration Policy: Welcoming Migrant Workers and Excluding Asylum Seekers by Nanako Inaba, April 27, 2026. Georgetown Journal of International Affairs. Despite a new immigration system to address labor shortages, the Japanese government remains reluctant to address undocumented migrants, specifically Karihomensha communities. This article explains how the unethical treatment of undocumented migrants in Japan reflects a broader issue in which the country fails to protect the human rights of migrant workers who contribute to critical economic growth. It argues that, to remedy this human rights crisis and adhere to national and international standards, Japan should grant undocumented migrants residence status and proposes a mechanism to do so.

38 migrants die off Libya coast, including Egyptians, Sudanese, and Ethiopians, April 28, 2026, Middle East Monitor. Thirty-eight irregular migrants have died after a boat sank off the coast of eastern Libya, the Libyan Attorney General’s Office said on Monday. In a statement, the office said the victims were on a dilapidated vessel that departed from the city of Tobruk, heading north across the Mediterranean. It added that a human trafficking network had organised the journey using an unsafe boat, which sank before reaching its destination. The victims were of Sudanese, Egyptian and Ethiopian nationalities.

EVENTS, RESOURCES, DIGITAL AND SOCIAL MEDIA

Event: The future of solutions to internal displacement? Refugee Law Initiative. Given the prevalence of internal displacement globally, its low profile in humanitarian practice and research is both notable and problematic. The newly published, 45-chapter Oxford University Press Handbook of Internal Displacement seeks to change that. This launch event brings together five of its authors (David Cantor (RLI), Walter Kälin (Former UN Special Rapporteur on IDPs), Martina Caterina (UNHCR), Natalia Krynsky Baal (UNHCR), and Greta Zeender (GICHD)) to reflect on the importance of a renewed focus on internal displacement for engaging with key challenges for humanitarian work in a rapidly shifting global context. This is a hybrid event and the in-person location is at NHCR HQ, 94 rue de Montbrillant, Geneva. It will be on May 28, 2026, 12:30 PM – 1:30 PM CEST.

Event: To be or not to be: The road to citizenship. Research Matters. Join for an engaging look on the importance of immigrants’ social environments in decisions to become citizens and how citizenship trends are changing in Canada. Maciej Karpinski (IRCC) will open the discussion by presenting Longitudinal Immigration Database (IMDB) data from 2011 to 2023 to unpack recent trends in citizenship uptake. The analysis provides new evidence on when citizenship uptake started to decline, how large the drop is and whether it’s a lasting trend among immigrants who meet eligibility requirements. Thomas Soehl (McGill University) will then explain how social connections influence immigrants’ decisions to apply for citizenship. This study shows that people don’t apply for citizenship just because they know someone who already has it. They are more likely to apply when influence comes through strong social ties to naturalized immigrants who share similar characteristics like education or migration experiences. Seeing peers gain citizenship can encourage others to apply as a way to achieve equal status. This online event is on May 13 at 1:30 PM to 3:00 PM EDT.

Seminar: Sovereignty Ordering Migrations Inside European Borders: Uses vs. Ethics. MOEBIUS Seminar. Baptiste Jouzier will give a lecture on the topic, “Encadrer la gestion des migrations, renforcer la protection des migrants : la normativité au défi de la gouvernance mondiale des migrations .” This event is online on May 15, from 2:00 – 4:00PM CEST.

Seminar: Queer and Trans Mobilities and the Search for Refuge. Migration Mobilities Bristol. Mengia Tschalär (CUNY), Samuel Ritholtz (Oxford), Rebecca Buxton and B Camminga (Bristol) in conversation with Diego Rodriguez (Leicester). A conversation across three books: The Way Out: Justice in the Queer Search for Refuge (University of California Press, 2026), East African Queer and Trans Displacements (Bloomsbury, 2026), and Queer Liberalisms and Marginal Mobilities (Routledge, 2026). This is a hybrid event, with the in person location being at Arts Complex (Room G.H01), 3-5 Woodland Road, Bristol BS8 1UJ. This will be on May 20, 2026, 4:00 – 5:30 PM BST.

Virtual Book Launch: Canada in the Global Refugee Regime. Carleton University. Join editors Nathan Benson, James Milner, and Dephine Nakache for the virtual book launch of Canada in the Global Refugee Regime, exploring Canada’s role in responding to global displacement and advancing collective action for refugee protection. Drawing on policy insight and scholarly analysis, the book highlights the political dimensions of contemporary refugee protection, underscoring the limitations of the existing global refugee regime. This event will be online on May 20, 2026, 11:00 AM – 12:30 PM EDT.

The RRN Research Digest provides a synopsis of recent research on refugee and forced migration issues from entities associated with the RRN and others.

You can download the digest in PDF format here: RRN Research Digest

No. 182 | April 23, 2026

NEW RESEARCH AND PUBLICATIONS

Bompani, B., Camminga, B., Marnell, J., & Wairuri, K. (2026a). East African queer and trans displacements. Bloomsbury Academic. Open access book. This open-access volume brings together original scholarly and creative works to explore the drivers, impacts and meanings of queer and trans displacement in and from East Africa. Drawing on diverse case studies, this ground-breaking collection demonstrates the value of regional perspectives and interdisciplinary approaches. Over the past decade, East Africa has become synonymous with state-sponsored homo/ transphobia, marked by draconian legislation and recurring moral panics. These escalating dynamics have forced many LGBTQI East Africans to flee their homes. Some reach other parts of the continent or even further afield, but most end up in neighbouring countries, facing similar risks and hardships. Yet it would be wrong to characterise East Africa solely as a producer or host of LGBTQI refugees. It is also a site of activism and community, of belonging and enterprise, where the limits of protection mechanisms are tested and redefined.

Clark-Kazak, C. R. (2026a). Age and immigration policy in Canada: Toward an equitable approach. UBC Press. Open access book. Discrimination on the basis of age and family status is deeply embedded in Canadian immigration law and policy. How and why does age function as part of a broader system of border control? Age and Immigration Policy in Canada draws on archival research, case studies, and interviews with lawyers, former public servants, and settlement workers to unpack the explicit and implicit justification for age qualifications in the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act and regulations. This is an innovative, thoughtful analysis for researchers, scholars, and students of migration studies, public policy and administration, sociology, refugee and immigration law, and social work. Public officials, lawyers, and civil society organizations who work with immigrant populations will also appreciate its empirical contribution to understanding Canadian immigration law and policy.

Bandarchian Rashti, N. (2026). Resettlement Stories: Photovoice with Adolescent Girls and Young Women with Refugee Backgrounds in Québec. Refuge: Canada’s Journal on Refugees, 41(2), 1–22. Despite extensive migration research, the resettlement experiences of adolescent girls and young women with refugee backgrounds remain underexplored. This research, grounded in girlhood studies and participatory visual and arts-based methodology, engaged nine participants (ages 14–24) from Haiti, Venezuela, Congo, and Brazil in the province of Quebec, Canada. Through photovoice, participants documented their experiences, highlighting key challenges such as discrimination, mental health struggles, financial insecurity, and educational barriers. While they reported feeling physically safe, systemic barriers continued to hinder their full integration. Findings emphasize the need for targeted support and programs to foster meaningful inclusion and long-term well-being.

Kılınçarslan, P., Dalkıran, M., & İçduygu, A. (2026). Navigating Vulnerability in the Context of Resettlement: Syrian Youth in Türkiye. Refuge: Canada’s Journal on Refugees, 42(1), 1–22. This article explores vulnerability in the resettlement experiences and imaginaries of Syrian refugee youth (aged 18–35) in Türkiye, a group often excluded from conventional vulnerability frameworks. Based on in-depth interviews, it conceptualizes vulnerability as multi-faceted, spanning innate, structural, and situational dimensions. Findings show how shifting migration policies, politicization, and institutional barriers compound insecurities, shaping how youth imagine and pursue resettlement in a protracted refugee context. The study contributes to debates on vulnerability, youth migration, and the evolving possibilities of resettlement, and underlines the need for international policies and agreements that adopt context-sensitive approaches addressing structural and situational factors.

Masterson, D., & Vidarte, R. (2026). Circular refugee migration: Understanding protracted displacement beyond a refugee-returnee binary. International Migration Review. Open access. What explains patterns of circular migration during protracted refugee displacement? We examine circular refugee migration (CRM) between Syria and Lebanon, focusing on why refugees undertake trips to their home country and how they navigate them. The findings suggest that CRM is a high-stakes survival strategy that people are compelled to rely on during protracted displacement, with three key empirical regularities. First, refugees traveling between the host country and home country face considerable risks, including forced conscription, arrest, and violence on smuggling routes. Second, CRM is usually driven by urgent needs related to healthcare, documentation, and family. Third, CRM often reveals a disconnect between intentions and outcomes due to worse-than-expected conditions—planned circular migration may result in unplanned return, and planned return may end in unplanned circular migration.

REPORTS AND POLICY BRIEFS

Briefing note: How are humanitarians using artificial intelligence? January 2026 pulse survey insights. (2026). Reliefweb. The humanitarian sector continues to face deep funding shortfalls and structural change amid accelerating global AI developments. AI is embedded in the humanitarian ecosystem, but largely driven by individual uptake of commercial tools. Working with vulnerable populations and sensitive data – and the imperative to do no harm – means responsible AI adoption and skills development are critical challenges for the sector.

Exhausted: Three years of displacement and the collapse of survival systems in Sudan and the region. (2026). Norwegian Refugee Council. On 15 April 2023, war broke out in Sudan between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF). Since then, the fighting has been fierce, turning major cities into battlegrounds, villages and farms into ashes, and forcing millions of families to flee their homes. Hundreds of thousands died in the violence, and entire communities were killed because of their ethnicity in Darfur.

Three years later, Sudan has become one of the world’s largest humanitarian crises, with mass atrocities inflicted on civilians, and famine confirmed in multiple areas. The crisis did not stop at Sudan’s borders. To understand how Sudanese are coping three years into the war, the authors surveyed refugees and IDPs across Sudan, Chad and South Sudan. Findings are supplemented by a separate needs assessment by partners in Egypt and REACH’s Multi-Sector Needs Monitoring (MSNM) Round 2 data for Libya. 

Internal Displacement Law and Policy in a Changing World by Deborah Casalin. (2026). Researching Internal Displacement. This is the third volume in a series on ‘Internal Displacement in a Changing World Order’. It argues that in the face of escalating pressures on international cooperation, resources and norms – which in turn aggravate the situation of IDPs and their societies – it is crucial to keep consolidating the internal displacement legal regime, as well as strengthening and building on it further to address the growing and evolving challenges of internal displacement situations. The first part outlines some features of the internal displacement legal regime which may be leveraged to safeguard existing progress. These include its foundations in international human rights law and international humanitarian law; its multi-level anchoring; and its broad contextual relevance. The second part indicates some ways in which this legal regime can be reinforced and developed in the longer term: in particular, by consolidating existing protections at different levels; clarifying and further elaborating norms where needed; and gathering and analysing relevant legal data to track evolution and application of the internal displacement legal regime, as well as how this may still need to develop.

Somali systems: from aid-centred to state-led crisis response by Surer Mohamed & Dustin Barter. (2026). ODI Global. This paper examines the prospects for shifting from aid-centred to state-led crisis response in Somalia and Somaliland. It is grounded in political economy dynamics, including the role of aid, that are deeply consequential and typically antithetical to realising and sustaining state leadership. The analysis is guided by near universal agreement across interviewed stakeholders that the status quo is untenable and the need for change is urgent, yet long-term vision and substantive change remain elusive.

The case for large cash transfers: supporting refugees to meet basic needs and build resilience by Kerrie Holloway, (2026). ODI Global. This policy brief reports the findings of the baseline and endline surveys of the large cash transfer programme in Kiryandongo. It builds on a previous policy brief published by Humanitarian Policy Group in September 2025, which showed that cash is faster, cheaper, less wasteful, more impactful and more flexible than aid given in kind, and argued that cash transfers – and ideally large cash transfers – should be given first in a crisis.

NEWS AND BLOG POSTS

Failed peace deal: The Iran war has inflicted a cascade of losses that may never be recovered by Kawser Ahmed, April 14, 2026. The Conversation. Every ceasefire is haunted by the same question: will it live up to the promise of peace? The United States and Iran could apparently only focus on their disagreements during peace talks in Islamabad, with negotiations led by American Vice President JD Vance failing to result in a deal. Experts speculated that Iran’s 10-point peace proposals and the American 15-point plan were too far apart to lead to consensus. This is perhaps unsurprising. Between 1945 and 2009, a survey of peace treaties suggests that fewer than half of all countries that experienced armed conflict managed to avoid falling back into violence.

From Gaza to Lebanon: Forcible Displacement Dressed in Humanitarian Garb by Eitan Diamond & Ellen Nohle, April 17, 2026. EJIL: Talk! In recent hostilities, first in the Gaza Strip and now in Lebanon, the Israeli military has adopted a new modus operandi: issuing blanket relocation directives instructing millions of people to indefinitely leave their places of residence (evacuation orders in Lebanon were discussed here). The apparent objective is to enable Israel to engage an enemy embedded in densely populated civilian areas while ostensibly respecting its obligations under international humanitarian law (IHL), including the obligation to direct operations only against military objectives, to refrain from attacks expected to cause excessive incidental civilian harm, and to implement precautions in attack.

Lebanese return to devastated south as fragile 10-day truce takes hold, April 17, 226. Aljazeera. Displaced Lebanese have begun cautiously returning to their homes in the south after Lebanon and Israel agreed to a 10-day truce, even as the Lebanese army calls on residents to delay their return and Hezbollah warns it has its “finger on the trigger” in case of Israeli violations. Tens of thousands of people poured into areas of southern Lebanon on Friday morning hours after the truce went into effect, many heading back to homes and villages battered by more than a month of Israeli attacks.

Pakistan Deports Over 5,000 Afghan Refugees in One Day Amid Intensified Crackdown, April 13, 2026. Kabul Now. Pakistan deported more than 5,000 Afghan refugees on Sunday, the largest single-day figure in recent months, as Islamabad intensified its campaign against undocumented Afghans amid ongoing border tensions with the Taliban. The Taliban-run commission for refugee affairs said 4,796 Afghans entered Afghanistan through the Torkham crossing in eastern Nangarhar province, while 369 others returned via the Spin Boldak crossing in southern Kandahar.

Trapped between borders and bureaucracy by Caolán Magee, April 18, 2026. Aljazeera. Amir Ali stood on a narrow strip of land between two countries. Ahead, Moroccan guards moved through the darkness with flashlights and dogs. Behind him, Algerian security forces waited. For two days, he stayed hidden in the hills between the Algerian town of Maghnia and Morocco’s Oujda, watching the patrols below. Ali had been travelling for more than a year. He had fled a war in Sudan that killed his family, been detained and beaten by the country’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), extorted by police and trafficked to a farm in Libya, where captors demanded money and tortured those who could not pay. He had crossed deserts and borders, slept rough and gone hungry. Now Morocco, the last stop on his journey, was close enough to see.

VENTS, RESOURCES, DIGITAL AND SOCIAL MEDIA

Event | Queer and Trans Mobilities and the Search for Refuge – Book Panel, University of Bristol (Hybrid). Despite decades of expansion in international asylum frameworks, queer and trans people continue to face a world in which protection is partial, exclusionary, and shaped by the very power structures that produce their displacement. This panel brings together the authors and editors of three major new works to interrogate the politics of queer and trans displacement across different scales and geographies — from the shortcomings of the international refugee protection regime, to the complex social, political, and legal dynamics of East Africa, to the contradictions of queer liberal governance in the Global North and South. The panel will discuss: The Way Out: Justice in the Queer Search for Refuge (University of California Press, 2026), East African Queer and Trans Displacements (Bloomsbury, 2026), and Queer Liberalisms and Marginal Mobilities (Routledge, 2026). Speakers are Mengia Tschalär, Samuel Ritholtz, Rebecca Buxton, B Camminga, and Diego García Rodríguez. This is a hybrid event on May 20, 2026, 4:00 – 5:30 PM (BST) at the University of Bristol and online.

Podcast: Why Is Immigration Policy So Hard to Get Right? Migration Policy Institute. Why has immigration become so politically divisive—and why is it so difficult for governments to design policies that satisfy both public concerns and economic needs?

Toolkit to identify statelessness in Scotland. European Network on Statelessness. This is an accessible toolkit to help frontline practitioners in Scotland identify if someone they are working with might be stateless or have undetermined nationality. The toolkit provides practical guidance on how to identify statelessness and signpost those affected to the right information, advice, and support. The resource is aimed at frontline practitioners in Scotland who are not experts in statelessness or immigration or nationality law. This might include social workers, healthcare workers, registrars, teachers, migrant and refugee support workers, community organisations, guardians, and others.

Webinar: Borders, Responsibility, and Refugee Governance In a Changing Protection Landscape. Columbia University. This virtual event on May 4, 2026, 10:00 – 11:00 AM ET, examines forced migration through the lens of global governance, focusing on the interconnected roles of Turkey, Greece, and France within broader regional and international systems of refugee protection and migration management. Rather than treating displacement as a challenge faced only at Europe’s margins, the discussion considers how governance is shaped across countries of transit, arrival, and political decision-making.

Webinar: Forced Migration in Latin America: Challenges and Creative Solutions. Columbia University. This virtual event on April 28, 2026, at 5:00 – 6:00PM ET, features speakers, Roberto González, Silvia Corradi Sander, Franklim Colletti, and Manuela Orjuela. In 2026, the world marks the 75th anniversary of the 1951 Refugee Convention — the treaty that established the international framework for refugee protection in the aftermath of World War II. This milestone comes at a moment of unprecedented displacement, strained protection systems, and growing pressure on the multilateral institutions that once anchored global cooperation. However, migration is both a historical constant and a driver of transformation in Latin America. Join this webinar to hear how expert panelists challenge the crisis-centered narrative and review migration as a constitutive element of Latin American societies, seeking creative solutions for the issues posed by this phenomenon.

The RRN Research Digest provides a synopsis of recent research on refugee and forced migration issues from entities associated with the RRN and others.

You can download the digest in PDF format here: RRN Research Digest

No. 181 | April 9, 2026

NEW RESEARCH AND PUBLICATIONS

Hertoghs, M. (2026). Working the Dutch Asylum Apparatus: An Ethnography of suspicious compassion and state power. Berghahn Books. Open access book. Since the 1970s, the recurring discourse of a ‘refugee crisis’ in Europe has affected border strategies that create a context of suspicion and criminalise asylum applicants. This book examines how the Netherlands engages with the arrival of certain (often illegalised) travellers and the asylum procedure, a tense liminal space and time that ensures decisions of inclusion and exclusion. Dutch asylum procedure is a peculiar legal procedure that gathers different people and sensitivities together to make swift, life-altering decisions for those applying for protection. Based on an extensive ethnography, this book reveals the ways in which suspicious compassion in Dutch asylum pervades an objective decision-making practice.

Doumiati, J. L., Bakri, H., Yared, G., Eter, M., Antar, J., & Bouclaous, C. (2026). Social determinants of postpartum depression among refugees and internally displaced women in Lebanon: A cross-sectional study. Scientific Reports. Open access. Refugees and internally displaced women (IDW) experience various health risks during displacement including inaccessible healthcare, infectious diseases, and mental health disorders, particularly depression. This cross-sectional study aimed to assess the prevalence of postpartum depression in refugees and IDW in Lebanon and its association with sociodemographic characteristics, interpersonal violence, resilience, and social determinants of health.

Falkenhain, M., Brenning, N., Dobrovolski, E., & Kim, M. (2026). Why Don’t They Work? Understanding the Complexity of Work Intentions Among Ukrainian Refugees in Germany. Journal of Immigrant & Refugee Studies, 1–15. Open access. Russia’s war against Ukraine has forced millions to leave their country. Although Ukrainian refugees were immediately entitled to access labor markets within the European Union, employment rates remained moderate in many European countries one year after the outbreak of war. This article investigates the underexplored question of how unemployed Ukrainian refugees in Germany envisioned their professional future early after arrival, how they experienced institutionalized requirements, and how the two interact. The authors identify four behavioral patterns—career orientation, impatience, hesitancy and overstrain—and capture nuanced differences in work intentions and institutional experiences. Findings reveal unintended negative consequences of one-size-fits-all policies and invite complexity thinking both politically and scientifically.

Mosawi, S. M. (2026). Refugee camps as contested gendered spaces: Afghan women’s liminality, inequality, and agency in Germany. Population, Space and Place, 32(2). Open access. This article examines how migrant women from Afghanistan who arrived in Germany in or after 2015—including asylum seekers, refugees, and those with rejected cases—experience and contest the everyday challenges within the liminal and precarious confines of camps and camp-like structures, including asylum reception and collective accommodation centres.

Sabchev, T., & Bond, J. (2026). Named Sponsorship and Newcomer Settlement: Insights from Canada’s Private Sponsorship of Refugees Program. Journal of Immigrant & Refugee Studies, 1–17. Named sponsorship allows sponsors to identify the specific refugees they wish to welcome and support, yet very little is known about the human links underpinning naming or how these impact newcomer settlement. Drawing on interviews with sponsors and other stakeholders in Canada’s Private Sponsorship of Refugees Program, this article offers two contributions. First, it shows that named sponsorship is used by a range of sponsors with diverse relationships to the refugees they name, challenging prevalent assumptions that named sponsorship is used exclusively by family members seeking reunification. Second, within this heterogeneity, we identify four types of named sponsorship and map the distinct impact that each type has on the settlement journey of sponsored newcomers.

REPORTS AND POLICY BRIEFS

Cuban Migration Dynamics in Latin America and the Caribbean – A Regional Snapshot (January 2025 – February 2026). IOM UN Migration. Between 2025 and the early months of 2026, new dynamics have emerged in Cuban mobility across Latin  America and the Caribbean. Insights from IOM’s Displacement Tracking Matrix (DTM), irregular migration  statistics provided by Central American governments, and regular migration figures from South America underscore the need for close monitoring and coordinated regional responses.

Into the storm: Ten years of search and rescue amid neglect, solidarity and struggle in the Central Mediterranean. (2026). SOS Méditerranée. SOS MEDITERRANEE is releasing a ten-year report to mark a decade of civilian search and rescue operations in the Central Mediterranean. As it looks to the years of operations ahead, the organization reaffirms its commitment to rescue, protect and bear witness through the publication of a manifesto.

Measuring What Matters: Piloting a Self-Assessment by and for Forcibly Displaced Populations. (2026). World Relief. The Measuring What Matters report profiles the pilot of the prototype refugee integration self-assessment tool introduced in the Integration Outcomes for Forcibly Displaced Persons (FDP) report. Designed to collect better integration data utilizing metrics defined by refugees themselves, the self-assessment tool proved to be more insightful than existing integration reporting mechanisms that focus on self-sufficiency, revealing essential takeaways on FDP integration. Offering both affirmation for successful integration practices and tips on where targeted support could strengthen integration journeys, the learnings from the Measuring What Matters report are extensive, generating recommendations relevant to a wide range of resettlement stakeholders. Most significantly and relevant to all stakeholders, the pilot project reasserts the importance of recognizing and centering FDP-defined integration metrics.

Resettlement under the New Pact on Migration and Asylum: A Step Forward or a Setback? (2026). JusGov. On 23 September 2020, the European Commission introduced the New Pact on Migration and Asylum, a proposal widely interpreted as a response to the recurring humanitarian crises and migrant fatalities at the European Union’s borders, by land or sea. These tragic events highlighted the pressing need for a renewed, cohesive European strategy – one that could prevent the persistence of what has been variously described as a “refugee crisis”, a “humanitarian emergency”, or even a “crisis of solidarity” and governance. The terminology used to frame the issue reflects not only differing perceptions of the root problem but also competing visions for how the EU should respond. In the New Pact, resettlement is positioned as a central tool to close existing gaps in legal access to protection for asylum seekers.

Unlocking refugee work authorisation in Kenya: a practical framework for economic inclusion, institutional alignment, and national growth. (2026). Norwegian Refugee Council. Kenya is at a turning point in how it supports refugees, not just with aid, but by opening pathways for them to work and contribute to the economy. While the law already allows refugees to apply for work permits, in practice many are blocked by complex, costly and unclear processes. This new white paper sets out simple, practical solutions to remove these barriers, showing how enabling refugees to work legally can strengthen self-reliance, support businesses, and benefit Kenya’s wider economy.

NEWS AND BLOG POSTS

After the Iran war: 5 possible outcomes and 4 ways Canada can flex its middle‑power muscle by Kawser Ahmed, March 31, 2026. The Conversation. The bombing in Iran and the broader Middle East will eventually cease. United States President Donald Trump keeps hinting about a possible end to hostilities and the U.S. has sent a 15-point peace proposal to Pakistan. But that doesn’t mean the end of consequences. International relations experts are already discussing several scenarios for what comes next. Each could reshape geopolitics for decades. In this charged moment, Canada’s often-touted identity as a “middle power” deserves honest scrutiny.

Dadaab voices: What’s behind the rise in refugee suicides? by Mohamed Jimale, March 25, 2026. The New Humanitarian. On a quiet morning in January in Kenya’s Dadaab refugee complex, 38-year-old Aden Mohamed Hafow, a father of four and a respected comprehensive school teacher, hung himself. Born in Somalia, he had arrived in Dadaab as a three-year-old in the early 1990s. He knew little else but the camp’s dusty paths and makeshift classrooms. For more than 15 years, he had waited patiently in the queue for US resettlement, dreaming of a fresh start. But that hope began to crumble last year when US President Donald Trump barred the entry of refugees from Somalia. Although there is no official data, anecdotally the feeling is that there has been a sharp rise in suicides, a consequence of the pressure cooker existence of prolonged displacement, slashed aid, and fading futures.

How trade unions and employers’ associations react to irregular migrants: Variations in policy preferences across five European countries by Clare Fox-Ruhs, March 30, 2026. EUI Migration Policy Centre. What does the presence of irregular migrants (those without the right to reside in host countries) mean for the interests of labour and capital?  What types of policy responses are likely to be favoured by trade unions and employers’ associations, and how might country context make a difference to labour market actors’ perceptions and preferences in relation to irregular migrants? These are among the questions explored in a new comparative institutional analysis of the interests and policy preferences of policy actors in relation to irregular migrants in Europe.

No Shelter: India’s Selective Abandonment of its Refugees by Anum Merchant, March 24, 2026. US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants. This explainer outlines how India’s refugee protection system operates in the absence of formal legal commitments under international refugee law. It begins by situating India’s decision not to sign the 1951 Refugee Convention, before examining its fragmented legal and administrative framework that governs refugees today. It then considers how this system functions through both historical examples of protection and more recent restrictive trends, with particular attention to the treatment of Rohingya refugees. The piece concludes by reflecting on the broader implications of India’s approach for refugee protection in an increasingly state-centric global order.

What learning English means to migrants by Sharon Freeman, March 30, 2026. The Conversation. It is widely accepted that learning English is essential for many adult migrants who move to the UK. Yet in the last census, over 1 million residents in England and Wales reported not speaking English well or at all. Over the years, governments have firmly placed the duty to learn English on the newcomer, framing English proficiency as a requirement of integration. Recent migration reform proposals increase the emphasis on English proficiency and progress in deciding who can come to the UK and stay long term. Experts argue that language learning is not always linear, and that these policies risk turning English into a surveillance tool, rather than a pathway to integration.

EVENTS, RESOURCES, DIGITAL AND SOCIAL MEDIA

Book launch: Decolonizing Queer Migration: Iranian Voices in Exile. School of Law, Politics and Sociology, University of Sussex. Join us for the launch of the book ‘Decolonizing Queer Migration: Iranian Voices in Exile’, published with Bristol University Press. What happens to sexual and gender identities when crossing borders under duress? This book offers an unprecedented account of how forced migration shapes the lives of queer Iranian individuals. Tracing movements from Iran through transition countries to Western resettlement, the book explores how identities are expressed, negotiated, silenced, and reimagined along the way. Engaging de/postcolonial theory and participatory methods, the authors centre the voices of non-heterosexual and non-cisnormative Iranians in exile. The authors – Moira Dustin, Nuno Ferreira, Kamran Matin, Mehran Rezaei-Toroghi and Isabel Soloaga – will be joined by: Arghavan Shamsara, journalist and activist based in Vancouver, Canada; and, Peyman, refugee participant based in Denizli, Turkey. This is an online event on April 23, 2026, 12:00 PM – 1:30 PM EDT.

MOEBIUS Seminar: Rethinking mobility: reciprocity and agency for North-South equity. MOEBIUS. This next event in the MOEBIUS Seminar series includes speaker Sylvie Saroléa, Professeure de droit, Université catholique de Louvain, Présidente de l’Institut JUR-I. The online event will be on April 10, 2026, 10:00AM – 12:00PM Europe/Paris time.

Seminar: Rethinking aid: Lessons from refugee‑led responses. PRIO. You are invited to a seminar on the role of localization, refugee-led assistance and innovative funding mechanisms. These discussions are highly relevant for ongoing national processes, including the Norwegian government’s work on what they have called Project Turning Point, an effort to rethink how Norway engages with humanitarian and development aid to make the greatest possible difference in the world. This online event will be on April 23, 2026, 1:00PM – 2:30PM UTC.

Seminar Six: International Refugee Law and the Global Compact – Where Are the Women? WIRL Seminar Series 2025/26. This will be the sixth and final in a series of free online seminars hosted by the Women in Refugee Law (WiRL) network on the theme of “Refuge in a cold climate: the impact on women”. These are public events, ideal for anyone whose work relates to refugee or asylum-claiming women or with an interest in the needs and experiences of refugee women. This series draws on WiRL’s global membership to apply a gendered lens in analysing the impact of increasing hostility to refugees in different states and contexts. Speakers include Hüseyin Ali Kudret, James C. Cameron, Madeline Garlick, and Ana María Díez. This event will be on April 27th, 3:00 PM – 4:15PM (BST).

The RRN Research Digest provides a synopsis of recent research on refugee and forced migration issues from entities associated with the RRN and others.

You can download the digest in PDF format here: RRN Research Digest

No. 180 | March 26, 2026

NEW RESEARCH AND PUBLICATIONS

Mendola, D. (2026). From arrival to settlement. Vulnerabilities of asylum seekers and refugees in Europe. Neodemos. Open access book. Italy, a strategic gateway for refugees and asylum seekers to enter Europe, faces growing influxes with a reception system that is not always adequate and not always responsive to people’s true vulnerabilities. This ebook, edited by Daria Mendola, explores the issue from a multidisciplinary perspective, placing Italy within the broader European context and offering concrete policy recommendations for managing vulnerabilities.

Obeid, M. (2026). Migration as anchorage: Ethnography of a Palestinian family in London. BERGHAHN BOOKS. On a temporary visit to London, a Palestinian family found themselves unable to return to Gaza during Israel’s 2008 war on their city. Understanding their stay in London as an act of ‘anchoring’, the family opened a Palestinian café and sought to make their lives – as individuals, as a family and as a community – viable in the face of uncertainty. By following the stories of various family members as they struggled to recreate a sense of home, this moving ethnography introduces the concept of anchorage as a novel lens to understand migration, home and place, highlighting the fluidity, temporariness and serendipity of these experiences.

Fee, M. (2026). Believing in Light after Darkness: Displacement and Refugee Resettlement. University of California Press. War, persecution, and climate change too often force people from their homes and across borders. Most remain in difficult conditions in neighboring countries. The less than one percent of refugees offered resettlement to a different country gain an alternative path forward, with access to specialized supports and services that are traditionally understood as a solution to displacement and a program of integration. Examining the complexities of refugees’ lived experiences, Molly Fee’s deeply humanistic ethnography reframes resettlement as a period of disruption and disorientation, when newly arrived refugees must navigate the rules and expectations of a new country. For those who have already rebuilt their lives numerous times, resettlement becomes yet another uprooting. This book reveals how humanitarian solutions, though well intentioned, do not immediately resolve the conditions of displacement.

Schultz, J. (2026). Revisiting the “Imperative of Categories”: Women at Risk in Resettlement Practice. Refuge: Canada’s Journal on Refugees. Refugee “women at risk” (WaR) have been prioritized since the late 1980s as candidates for third-country resettlement. Drawing on Macklin (1995), this article interrogates the logic and consequences of the WaR category. Through the lens of Norwegian practice, it shows how restrictive interpretations of UNHCR’s criteria and securitized resettlement processes reinforce a culture of disbelief and a focus on non-state protection by men. The application of WaR incentivizes family separation and perpetuates essentialist ideas about women’s vulnerabilities. While a broader category for gender-based risks can moderate WaR’s exclusionary effects, it similarly contributes to legitimizing harmful border regimes. 

Suter, B. (2026). Sweden’s New Resettlement Policy: Introducing Gender and Gender Equality as Governing Tools in Migration Governance. Refuge: Canada’s Journal on Refugees. In 2022, Sweden introduced new refugee selection guidelines prioritizing women and girls—a departure from earlier practices focused solely on vulnerability. Through a problem representation analysis, this article examines parliamentary motions on resettlement from 2015 to 2022, exploring how gender, im/mobility, religion, and vulnerability shape notions of deservingness. It argues that gender is—intentionally or not—used as a governance tool, reflecting a broader migration policy shift of not only framing men and asylum seekers as a problem but creating the grounds for weakening rights-based approaches in favour of a more humanitarian approach to migration governance driven by compassion but also control. 

REPORTS AND POLICY BRIEFS

Data on the Forcibly Displaced: From Statistical Shadows to Inclusion. (2026). Joint Data Center on Forced Displacement. Forced displacement continues to increase globally, with most displaced people living in low‑ and middle‑income countries (LMICs) where displacement is often protracted and resources constrained. In many contexts, reliable and comparable socioeconomic data on forcibly displaced persons remain limited, creating significant gaps in understanding their living conditions and how their welfare is linked to that of surrounding host communities. Data on the Forcibly Displaced: From Statistical Shadows to Inclusion brings together analysis and country experience to examine the challenges–and opportunities–in generating and using data on displaced populations. The report demonstrates how stronger displacement data systems can support policies that advance the socioeconomic inclusion of forcibly displaced persons while also improving outcomes for host communities.

From climate stress to social strain: Migration, governance and local resilience in Iraq. (2026). Berghof Foundation. Iraq’s climate emergency has become one of the most pressing threats to human security and social stability in the region. Rising temperatures, shrinking rivers and recurring droughts are reshaping both the physical environment and the political landscape. For communities already weakened by decades of conflict and economic fragility, these environmental stressors are no longer peripheral, but they define daily survival and intensify existing vulnerabilities. This report presents a concise synthesis of key findings and insights from a broader, in-depth research study. It examines how climate change, migration and social cohesion intersect across four climate-affected governorates: Nineveh, Diyala, Kirkuk and Al-Sulaymaniyah.

How Cruel Migration Policies Hurt People. (2026). American Friends Service Committee. The report explains that the externalization of migration takes place through three main practices: (1) preventing migrants from reaching the destination country; (2) shifting asylum procedures, in whole or in part, to third countries; and (3) returning or expelling people to countries other than their country of origin. All three practices are currently present across Latin America.

Migration Anticipation and Preparedness: Making Migration Management Work. (2026). OECD. Governments face increasing pressure to respond swiftly and effectively to rapidly evolving international migration flows – whether forced or planned. Anticipation is key to this response, but remains a challenge, and some important categories of migration are still not the object of forecast. This practical guide offers concrete measures to introduce, run and strengthen migration forecasting systems and preparedness strategies.

NEWS AND BLOG POSTS

Eid celebrations dimmed by war and displacement across Middle East by Justin Salhani & Maram Humaid, March 20, 2026. Al Jazeera. Economic crises and conflict dampen traditional Eid celebrations in Iran, Gaza, and Lebanon.

Over 1M Supported in 2025 as Nearly 11M Still Need Assistance in Ukraine, March 19, 2026. IOM UN Migration. The International Organization for Migration (IOM) assisted over one million people in 2025 across Ukraine and neighbouring countries, even as nearly 11 million people in Ukraine continue to require humanitarian assistance, according to its newly released 2025 Annual Report for Ukraine and Regional Response.

Selective compassion in Australia’s refugee policy by Nail Aykan, March 12, 2026. Pearls and Irritations. Australia’s decision to grant humanitarian visas to Iranian footballers highlights how refugee policy often rewards cases that fit convenient political narratives. When Immigration Minister Tony Burke granted humanitarian visas on 10 March 2026 to a group of Iranian women footballers, the announcement was framed as a triumph of humanitarian compassion. Australia, we were told, had stepped up to offer refuge to women facing repression in Iran. Few would dispute that people facing persecution deserve protection. But the decision raises an uncomfortable question: why does humanitarian urgency sometimes appear selectively in Australia’s refugee system – often aligning neatly with political narratives that reinforce western moral virtue?

US to require up to $15,000 bond for visa applicants from 12 new countries, March 18, 2026. Al Jazeera. The United States Department of State has added a dozen countries to a list that requires visa applicants to post bonds of as much as $15,000 for entry into the US. The 12 additional countries bring the total number of nations subject to the restrictions to 50. Most of them are African nations, and critics argue that the high bonds discriminate against low-income travellers.

Why the world is managing crises, not solving them by Dr. Azeem Ibrahim, March 21, 2026. Arab News Japan. A quiet but consequential shift is underway in global crisis management. The international system is no longer organized around resolving conflicts or reversing humanitarian catastrophes. Instead, it is increasingly focused on containing them, geographically, politically and financially. From Myanmar to Gaza to Sudan, the priority is not durable solutions but limiting spillover. This may appear pragmatic in a fragmented world. In reality, it is a strategy that risks normalizing permanent crisis.

EVENTS, RESOURCES, DIGITAL AND SOCIAL MEDIA

Book launch: Weaving Indigenous Re-existences: Struggles for the Defence of Water and Territory in Mexico and Canada. York University. After centuries of colonization and territorial dispossession, Indigenous struggles to defend and protect water and land have become even more crucial. For Indigenous peoples, defending and protecting water and land involves not only rejecting the policies of the nation-state but also embodying alternative ways of life and building alternative political projects. This is an afternoon dialogue with book editor and authors Angele Alook and Isabel Altamirano-Jimenez. This will be on Monday, March 30, 2026, 2:30 PM – 4:30 PM, at Centre for Indigenous Knowledges and Languages (CIKL) Boardroom, York Lanes, 3rd Floor – Room 353B.

Course: Forced Migration, Protection, and Humanitarianism. Oxford Brookes University. This module explores the experience of refugees and other forced migrants displaced by conflict. It examines the causes of contemporary forced migration in order to understand the implications of different causes for the nature of migration flows and the corresponding humanitarian response. It critically evaluates the international and regional normative frameworks for the protection of forced migrants, considering different migrant categories: refugees, internally displaced persons, stateless persons, and victims of human trafficking. The module considers the practical dilemmas in protecting the rights of forced migrants. This course is £600 and participants will receive a certificate of participation at the end of the course from Oxford Brookes University. The course dates are 20 Apr 2026 to 15 Jun 2026, and the registration deadline is 17 Apr 2026.

End of Term Potluck. Centre for Refugee Studies. The CRS, CERLAC, and TCAR research centres cordially invite you to the end of term potluck. Bring your favourite food or drink to share. No registration necessary. It will be on April 2, 2026, 2:00PM – 3:30PM at the Common Area, Eighth Floor, Kaneff Tower, Keele Campus, York University.

Podcast: Grounding the Components of an Ethical Response to Refugees. Refugee Studies Centre, University of Oxford. With extensive and volatile disagreement on the existence and extent of the obligations of states in the Global North towards refugees, this talk seeks to develop an understanding of the grounds of specific obligations that states owe to refugees. These obligations will then constitute the components of an ethical response. Bradley Hillier-Smith of the University of St. Andrews aims to highlight the limitations of the dominant philosophical approach to understanding obligations to refugees – the duty of rescue approach – to reach a new understanding. He first analyses certain state practices used in response to refugees including border violence, detention, encampment and containment, which the duty of rescue approach fails to sufficiently engage with, in order to ground states’ negative duties towards refugees. He then analyses specific harms and injustices refugees face as a result of their displacement, which the duty of rescue approach fails to sufficiently engage with, in order to ground states’ positive duties towards refugees. Taken together these negative and positive duties constitute the foundational elements of an ethical response. The talk then briefly explores what this ethical response might look like and how it may be possible in practice. 

Seminar: Safe third country concept: A tool for containment and illegalization of mobility. Centre for Refugee Studies, York University. The current global mobility paradigm is geared towards stopping and deterring the arrival of asylum seekers and undocumented migrants to the Global North through policies for externalization of migration control. Externalization is the strategy of shifting migration control functions, such as border controls or processing of asylum applications, that are normally undertaken by a state within its own territory, to another state territory. The safe third country (“STC”) concept is a prime example of policies for externalization of migration control: it implies that when refugees do not arrive in a state directly from a country where their fundamental rights are at risk, they can be sent back to ‘safe third countries’ they passed through that are willing to accept their return. This talk frames externalization measures, and specifically STC practices, as the embodiment of the fundamental problems in the global mobility regime by reinforcing of the containment trend. Guest speaker, Gamze Ovacık, is a postdoctoral Fellow at McGill University Faculty of Law Centre for Human Rights and Legal Pluralism. This is an online event on April 15, 2026, 2:00 PM – 3:30 PM ET.

The RRN Research Digest provides a synopsis of recent research on refugee and forced migration issues from entities associated with the RRN and others.

You can download the digest in PDF format here: RRN Research Digest

NEW RESEARCH AND PUBLICATIONS

Minca, C., & Weima, Y. (Eds.). (2026). Thinking Like a Route: Counter-geographies of Informal Migration in the Balkans. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar Publishing. Open access book. This timely book posits the idea of a ‘route perspective’ as a multi-scalar methodology for studying informal migration. Claudio Minca, Yolanda Weima and their contributors draw on their rich multi-sited, multi-temporal ethnographic research along the Balkan Route, the most important informal overland migration route in Europe, to better understand how it is continuously formed through an ever-changing assemblage of spatialities, trajectories, materialities and actors.

Dew, A. (2026). Refugee Journeys to Australia: Safety, Security, and Support for People with Disabilities from Syria and Iraq. Based on in-depth life history interviews, the book details the challenges people faced as refugees with disabilities adapting to a new country. Some of these challenges are consistent with those faced by people from refugee backgrounds, but the book sheds special light on difficulties which are specific to or exacerbated by the disability experience.

Marnell, J., Camminga, B., Bompani, B., & Wairuri, K. (2026). East African queer and trans displacements. Bloomsbury Academic. Open access. The last decade has seen a sharp rise in state-sponsored homophobia and transphobia in East Africa. This includes discriminatory legislation, such as the widely condemned Anti-Homosexuality Act in Uganda, and government-initiated crackdowns, such as the ‘anti-gay taskforce’ launched in Tanzania in 2018. The politicisation of sexual and gender rights in the region is often presented as a moral crusade (i.e. a return to traditional/family values) and is enacted with the support of many religious and cultural leaders. It is within this context that an ever-increasing number of LGBTQI+ people are leaving their homes and seeking protection elsewhere. Bringing together diverse case studies and interdisciplinary perspectives, this open access collection serves as the first in-depth examination of queer and trans displacement in East Africa. The collection features original creative works by queer and trans diasporic writers and artists with first-hand experiences of displacement.

Mosawi, S.M. (2026). Refugee Camps as Contested Gendered Spaces: Afghan Women’s Liminality, Inequality, and Agency in Germany. Population, Space and Place. Open access. The article examines how migrant women from Afghanistan who arrived in Germany in or after 2015, including asylum seekers, refugees, and those with rejected cases, experience and contest everyday challenges within the confines of camps and camp-like structures, including asylum reception and collective accommodation centres. The paper contributes to refugee and critical camp studies, arguing that these spaces are contested gendered spaces in which migrant women encounter intersecting inequalities while also exercising agency through diverse strategies including creative space-making, resilient navigation, and solidarity through faith and sisterhood.

Paynter, E. (2026). Crisis Oral History and the Asylum Timescape: Temporalities, Solidarities, and Affect in Interviews with Ukrainians with Temporary Protection in Italy. The Oral History Review, 1–26. This article reflects on how “crisis oral history” can illuminate layered, nonlinear temporal experiences of displacement and resettlement. The author draws on interviews they recorded with Ukrainians displaced to Italy in what the Italian government termed the emergenza ucraina, or Ukrainian emergency, following Russia’s 2022 invasion. The discussion emphasizes that, given how experiences of time shape narratives of displacement, transit, and reception, oral history can play a key role in documenting periods understood as crisis and in elucidating crisis time.

Zard, S., O’Driscoll, C., Mulcaire, J., Holt, L., Menon, S., & Brady, F. (2026). Statelessness and mental health experiences of Kuwaiti Bidoon people living in the UK: An interpretative phenomenological analysis. PLOS Mental Health, 3(2). Open access. The Kuwaiti Bidoon are a group of people affected by statelessness. Estimates suggest thousands of Kuwaiti Bidoon have forcibly migrated to the United Kingdom (UK); however, little is known about their experiences of mental health. This study aimed to explore the mental health experiences of statelessness among Kuwaiti Bidoon people living in the UK, and their experiences of accessing mental health services (where indicated). Participants were five Kuwaiti Bidoon people currently living in the UK. Some participants reported barriers to accessing effective mental health support, which was sometimes connected to their legal status. This study raises awareness of the context for UK-based Bidoon people and furthers understanding of the long-term negative mental health consequences of statelessness.

REPORTS AND POLICY BRIEFS

Data on the Forcibly Displaced: From Statistical Shadows to Inclusion. (2026). Joint Data Center on Forced Displacement. Forced displacement continues to increase globally, with most displaced people living in low‑ and middle‑income countries (LMICs) where displacement is often protracted and resources constrained. In many contexts, reliable and comparable socioeconomic data on forcibly displaced persons remain limited, creating significant gaps in understanding their living conditions and how their welfare is linked to that of surrounding host communities. Data on the Forcibly Displaced: From Statistical Shadows to Inclusion brings together analysis and country experience to examine the challenges–and opportunities–in generating and using data on displaced populations. The report demonstrates how stronger displacement data systems can support policies that advance the socioeconomic inclusion of forcibly displaced persons while also improving outcomes for host communities.

Publication of the Compendium of Promising Practices on Access to Nationality for Stateless Children. (2026). European Committee on Legal Co-Operation. The purpose of the compendium is to serve as a source of inspiration to emulate positive legal changes in member states to better address the challenges of child statelessness. By identifying and highlighting promising legal and administrative practices from various member states, it provides concrete examples of how to prevent child statelessness and ensure children have access to nationality determination procedures promptly. The compendium focuses primarily on the critical areas of legal aid and representation, access to information, and access to justice regarding nationality and statelessness determination.

Compounding Returns: A Study On Remittance Loss and The Cost Of Deportations by Samuel Hall. (2026). World Vision. Deportations are rising at the same time that humanitarian resources are tightening. Communities that relied on migration and remittances to bridge chronic poverty are now facing abrupt income loss, escalating debt and layered shocks (including climate related disruption), with many households moving quickly from precarious self-reliance into acute need. This study provides ground-level evidence of how forced returns are reshaping household economies, community support systems, and where the pressure points translate to protection risks.

Forced displacement from Ukraine: The potential role of migration in Ukraine’s future reconstruction by Ninna Nyberg Sørensen. (2026). Danish Institute for International Studies. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has triggered one of the most significant population movements in recent European history. The loss of national population is not just a demographic challenge; it is a human capital problem that challenges the reconstruction and future development of Ukraine. This policy brief considers how various outcomes of the war in Ukraine might shape mobility, and what policy responses could be conducive to reconstruction.

Latest Asylum Trends 2025: Annual Analysis. (2026). European Union Agency for Asylum. The annual analysis of the Latest Asylum Trends provides an overview of the asylum situation in 2025 to the general public, through a dedicated webpage with analysis and a series of data visualisations.

NEWS AND BLOG POSTS

Authorities rescue 346 migrants near Crete amid spike in crossings, March 6, 2026. Ekathimerini.com. Authorities rescued 346 undocumented migrants in seven separate operations in the sea area south of Crete and Gavdos early Friday, the Coast Guard said. One of the rescue operations involved a merchant ship, while the missions were also supported by aerial surveillance from Frontex, the European Union’s border agency. Authorities said there was no immediate information about the migrants’ countries of origin. The increase in arrivals comes as officials in Athens express growing concern about the potential migration impact of the ongoing conflict in the Middle East.

Deportation from the US: The risks for stateless people by Alice Neikirk, March 3, 2026. Refugee Studies Centre. In July 2025, a disturbing story surfaced: Bhutanese refugees – people who had been formally resettled in the United States nearly a decade earlier – were being deported to Bhutan. Instead of ‘going home,’ they were met with persecution and expulsion. Swiftly pushed out again, they had no option but to return to the abandoned refugee camps where many had been born. These deportations raise important questions about how resettled refugees have returned to statelessness. Recently released datasets from US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) – made available through the Deportation Projects’ Freedom of Information Act request – offer part of the answer.

Floods Displace 48 Households in Central Kenya as Child Feared Dead by KNA, March 9, 2026. Capital News. At least 48 households across Central Kenya have been displaced following heavy rains that have been pounding the country since early March, with a child feared dead after being swept away by floodwaters. The Kenya Red Cross said the affected families are spread across several counties including Kiambu County, Meru County, Murang’a County, and Nyeri County.

South Sudan risks return to full-blown civil war as violence escalates by Carlos Mureithi, March 3, 2026. The Guardian. South Sudan is reeling from an escalating conflict between the government-aligned army and opposition forces and allied groups that observers say risks returning the country to a full-blown civil war. Violent confrontations in the world’s youngest country between the military, which is loyal to President Salva Kiir, and insurgents believed to be allied to the suspended vice-president, Riek Machar, have increased in recent weeks.

The U.S.‑Israel war with Iran could shatter the United Nations‑led global order by Kawser Ahmed, March 5, 2026. The Conversation. Even as American and Iranian officials were participating in Omani-mediated talks aimed at preventing further escalation between the two nations, the United States, alongside Israel, launched military strikes on Iran on Feb. 28. The mediation had raised cautious hopes of de-escalating long-running hostility between Iran and the U.S. Instead, this use of force reflects a familiar post-1945 pattern of major powers acting unilaterally rather than through multilateral institutions like the United Nations.

EVENTS, RESOURCES, DIGITAL AND SOCIAL MEDIA

Event: Embodied Intersectional Praxis (EIP) and Black LGBTQ+ Refugee Mental Health. The Mad Studies Hub/York University. The Mad Studies Hub would like to invite you to our next event, Embodied Intersectional Praxis (EIP) and Black LGBTQ+ Refugee Mental Health. This roundtable brings together scholarship, lived experience, and community practice to explore how migration, racialization, queerness, and policy intersect in shaping healing, harm, and justice. Grounded in Embodied Intersectional Praxis (EIP), this conversation centres lived experience not as anecdote, but as theory, method, and intervention. This event is moderated by Michaela Hynie, Professor and Interim Director for the Centre for Refugee Studies, with speakers: Patricia Bailey-Brown, Mbalu Lumor, and Rita Wairimu. This is a hybrid event at South Ross 802, York University and online, on March 24, 2026, 2:00PM – 3:00PM.

Podcast: Unsettled: Immigration in Turbulent Times. Zolberg Institute on Migration and Mobility. Unsettled: Immigration in Turbulent Times examines Trump administration policies and actions affecting immigration and migrants and their communities. It adopts a broad perspective, seeing immigration policies in the context of constitutional law and principles, US history and our national narrative. The podcast is hosted by Alex Aleinikoff, Senior Fellow at the Zolberg Institute on Migration and Mobility, The New School; Hiroshi Motomura, Susan Westerberg Prager Distinguished Professor of Law at UCLA and Faculty Co-Director, Center for Immigration Law and Policy; and Cristina Rodriguez, Leighton Homer Surbeck Professor of Law at Yale Law School. Unsettled is produced with support from the Oscar M. Reubhausen Fund at Yale Law School, the Center for Immigration Law and Policy at the UCLA School of Law, and the Zolberg Institute for Migration and Mobility at The New School.

Podcast: The Role of Immigration as South Korea Navigates Demographic Decline. Migration Policy Institute. South Korea faces a rapidly aging population and shrinking workforce. What role can immigration play in responding to these pressures? In this World of Migration podcast episode, MPI’s Lawrence Huang speaks with Juyoung Jang, a senior policy researcher and advisor on migration and demographics at South Korea’s Migration Research and Training Center.

WEBINAR: Identifying and protecting displaced stateless people in Europe: What needs to happen next? European Network on Statelessness. Join on 23rd March 2026, 11.30-12.45 CET, for a webinar bringing together statelessness experts, practitioners and advocates to highlight good practice and progress on statelessness determination and protection in Europe, explore protection gaps, and identify where further action is urgently needed.

The RRN Research Digest provides a synopsis of recent research on refugee and forced migration issues from entities associated with the RRN and others.

You can download the digest in PDF format here: RRN Research Digest

NEW RESEARCH AND PUBLICATIONS

Clark-Kazak, C. R. (2026). Age and immigration policy in Canada: Toward an equitable approach. UBC Press. Open access book*. Discrimination on the basis of age and family status is deeply embedded in Canadian immigration law and policy. How and why does age function as part of a broader system of border control? Age and Immigration Policy in Canada draws on archival research, case studies, and interviews with lawyers, former public servants, and settlement workers to unpack the explicit and implicit justification for age qualifications in the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act and regulations. Age and Immigration Policy in Canada advocates for a more equitable approach that reflects different migration experiences across the life course. This is an urgent call to bring immigration policy in line with the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and rights-based international norms. *The digital version of this book is open access.

Skovdal, M., & Anderson, L. S. (Eds.). (2026). Continuity of Care for Forcibly Displaced Persons Living with Chronic Illness (1st, First Edition ed.). Bristol University Press. Open access book. When people are forced to flee their homes – due to armed conflict, persecution, or human rights violations – continuity of care for those living with chronic illnesses becomes a critical concern. Yet, across the full migratory journey – from displacement and transit, through resettlement, and into possible onward movement such as return or circular migration – access to consistent, appropriate healthcare is often disrupted or fragmented. Responding to the WHO’s global research agenda on health, migration, and displacement, this edited volume brings together international research spanning diverse geographical settings, chronic conditions, population groups, and methodological approaches. It offers evidence and insights from across the entire continuum of mobility, identifying different types of work or strategies that are central to the evolving needs of forcibly displaced people living with chronic diseases.

Dustin, M. (2025). Putting people in boxes: Iranian exiles and queer identities. Sexuality & Culture, 30(1), 1–18. Open access. Sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression and sex characteristics (SOGIESC) are no longer uniformly viewed as stable and permanent individual attributes in academic and public discourse. Iran, and Iranian scholarship, has been an important site for this destabilisation. Postcolonial, feminist and queer theorists have mapped changes since the nineteenth century in how Iranian individuals and society perceive sexual and gender identities and behaviours, often attributing shifts in discourse to Iran’s engagement with Europe. Without overlooking the marginalisation and abuse of queer Iranians, this scholarship undermines simplistic Western narratives to create a more nuanced analysis of their experiences and related discourses. Meanwhile, and in contrast, in the broader field of refugee law and scholarship, homophobia and transphobia are now recognised as grounds for claiming asylum in Western refugee-receiving states, however the criteria for recognition assumes the stable conceptualisations of sexuality and gender identity that have been disrupted in other fields.

Motevali Zadeh Ardakani, A. (2026). Striving for forbidden education: narratives from recently arrived Afghan refugee women in regional Australia. Intercultural Education, 1–14. Open access. Afghan women’s right to education has been denied for decades. Despite some progress in the past two decades, education for women and girls has been restricted following the Taliban’s return to power in 2021, with secondary schools and universities being shut down. While many Afghan women resettled in Western countries, little is known about the nuances of their lives pre- and post-resettlement. This qualitative study investigates how the lived experiences and challenges of Afghan refugee women shape their post-resettlement journeys in regional Australia. The findings highlight how these women navigated patriarchal structures and demonstrated resilience in pursuing education despite the persistent obstacles. This study contributes to a deeper understanding of the educational challenges faced by Afghan refugee women and offers important implications for practice, policy, and research aimed at supporting their unique needs in Australia and similar resettlement contexts.

Saha, S. K., Hasan, M., Amin, M. B., & Bács, Z. (2026). Displacement due to riverbank erosion: A threat to education in Bangladesh. Progress in Disaster Science, 29, 100514. Open access. Riverbank erosion is a recurrent natural hazard in Bangladesh that causes large-scale displacement and poses a serious threat to human capital formation, particularly education. This study investigates the impact of erosion-induced displacement on schooling outcomes in erosion-prone communities along the Jamuna River using a mixed-methods approach. Distinct from existing studies that primarily emphasize income and livelihood losses, this research explicitly links environmental displacement to educational vulnerability. The findings highlight the importance of integrated disaster management, planned resettlement, and education-continuity policies in erosion-prone and deltaic regions.

REPORTS AND POLICY BRIEFS

Education on the edge: Access to education for conflict-displaced and migrant children along the Thailand-Myanmar Border. (2026). Save the Children. Access to education for children living in camps along the Thailand-Myanmar border has reached “breaking point” due to increased student numbers at a time of foreign aid cuts, Save the Children warned in a new report. Thailand has a long history of hosting refugees and migrants from neighbouring countries fleeing conflict, but children without identification documents have faced challenges in gaining admission to Thai schools and schools inside the camps which are heavily dependent on humanitarian aid. The report surveyed about 2,500 people including students, parents and teachers in Thailand between late 2025 and early 2026.

Budgeting for Asylum, Migration and Inclusion in Europe After 2027. (2026). ECRE. This policy paper analyses how the European Commission’s proposal for the Multiannual Financial Framework will impact EU funding for asylum in Europe. It focusses on the elements that will most likely determine how much money is spent on activities related to asylum, reception and inclusion, by whom and for which activities. The policy paper also includes specific recommendations to inform the negotiations on the legislative proposals.

How ICE Went Rogue. (2026). American Immigration Council. A brief analysis of the legal authorities governing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) operations — and how they’re being undermined and violated by policy and practice. This analysis looks at six key areas where immigration agents’ powers have come under scrutiny: vehicle and street stops; entering a home; arrests; workplace enforcement; and the use of force.

Overlooking Lived Experiences: Access to Asylum & Canada’s Safe Third Country Agreement. (2026). Centre for Migration Studies. As access to asylum narrows in the United States, Canada’s continued reliance on the Safe Third Country Agreement (STCA) has drawn renewed attention. CMS affiliate and Law Professor Efrat Arbel traces STCA legal challenges from 2007 to 2023 to reveal how the courts erroneously focus on the way the law appears on the books, rather than how it operates on the ground.

Quarterly Mixed Migration Update: Asia and the Pacific, Quarter 4, 2025. (2026). Mixed Migration Centre. The core countries of focus for this region are Afghanistan, Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Thailand, and Australia. Depending on the quarterly trends more attention may be given to any of the countries over the rest.

NEWS AND BLOG POSTS

Darfur genocide findings, extra aid cut deaths, and lofty Board of Peace promises: The Cheat Sheet, February 20, 2026. The New Humanitarian. This article provides a weekly account of humanitarian news, trends, and developments from around the globe.

Deportation as gendered violence: Afghan women’s experiences at the Iran-Afghanistan border by Neela Hassan, February 23, 2026. Border Criminologies: University of Oxford Law Faculty. Since Iran began cracking down on undocumented Afghan migrants in 2024, women have found themselves at the sharp end of their hostile border policies. A qualitative analysis of 40 publications from humanitarian and human rights organisations found that women faced heightened vulnerabilities during detention and deportation, reflecting serious violations of international refugee and human rights law that expose women to severe forms of violence and abuse.

Development-Induced Displacement of Indigenous Communities in Ecuador by Natasha Chávez, February 5, 2026. Researching Internal Displacement. This article examines how large-scale mining and oil extraction in Ecuador’s Amazon systematically displaces Indigenous communities through “dispossessive engineered migration.” Analyzing displacement at the Mirador and San Carlos Panantza mines and in Yasuní National Park, the piece shows how over 1,200 Indigenous People have been removed from ancestral territories through militarised evictions, manipulated consultation processes, and environmental degradation that makes land uninhabitable. The article argues that displacement is not an unintended consequence, but a deliberate strategy driven by state and corporate interests, effectively treating Indigenous Territories as disposable assets. The piece calls for demilitarising development projects, enforcing Free, Prior and Informed Consent as binding law rather than bureaucratic formality, reforming compensation frameworks to account for cultural loss, and strengthening Indigenous leadership in development decisions.

When ICE sweeps a community, public health pays a price – and recovery will likely take years by Nicole L. Novak & William D. Lopez, February 18, 2026. The Conversation. The Trump administration announced on Feb. 12, 2026, that it is ending Operation Metro Surge, its deployment of more than 3,000 federal immigration enforcement agents in Minneapolis, St. Paul and the surrounding metro area. Federal officials say some agents will remain in the area and have vowed that similar immigration sweeps are coming soon to other U.S. cities. As public health researchers who have been documenting the health impacts of immigration enforcement for over 10 years, these immigration sweeps can be seen as public health emergencies.

EVENTS, RESOURCES, DIGITAL AND SOCIAL MEDIA

CRS Seminar: New Pathways, Old Challenges? Navigating Labour Mobility for Skilled Refugees. Centre for Refugee Studies, York University. This panel brings together scholars and practitioners to critically examine the burgeoning landscape of labour mobility pathways for refugees and displaced people. The discussion will cover empirical findings from Australia, a global overview of the program, its genesis and debates in its current implementation, and a gendered analysis of the experiences of women skilled refugees in Canada. This 90-minute session will provide a nuanced and multi-scalar understanding of how these pathways are shaping the future of refugee protection. Speakers include Dr. Jeff Crisp, Dr. Louise Olliff, Dr. Gemechu Abeshu, Sarah Walder, and Dr. Zvezda Vankova. It is a virtual event on March 12, 2026, 3:00 PM – 4:00 PM ET.

MOEBIUS seminar, “Sovereignty ordering migrations inside European borders. Uses v. ethics. MOEBIUS. The seminar will feature a lecture by Thomas Gammeltoft-Hansen, Professor of Law and Director of the Center of Excellence for Global Mobility Law at the University of Copenhagen. His talk will focus on the theme, “Free Movement vs External Border Control? Reframing Schengen as Legal Infrastructure.” This is an online event on March 13, 2026, from 10 a.m. to 12 p.m, CET.

Podcast episode: Rethinking Humanitarianism | Burnout in the aid sector and how to respond. The New Humanitarian. With guests Javid Abdelmoneim, Nancy Nyambura, and Gemma Houldey, this episode is about the burnout humanitarians face. They work long hours in difficult environments – often separated from family, while facing serious safety risks. They’re trying to help people in the worst moments of their lives. In the middle of today’s funding crisis, they’re also deciding who gets aid and who does not. The participants talk about what’s driving high rates of burnout, how people can identify it and take action, and what organisations must do to better help their staff.

The 2026 Baptista Lecture: Crude Tactics: Venezuela, the U.S. and the Future of Resource Sovereignty in the Americas. CERLAC. At dawn on January 3, 2026, U.S. forces carried out a dramatic military operation in Caracas, capturing Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, and flying them to New York to face charges including narcoterrorism and weapons offenses. The raid marked the culmination of months of escalating U.S. military pressure and strikes. Yet in the immediate aftermath, much of Maduro’s government remains in place, and, despite early signs of tension, appears to be aligning with U.S. demands over oil and economic policy. This extraordinary moment has sparked urgent questions about the future—and the past—of Venezuela and its relationship with the United States: What became of chavismo after ruling for a quarter century? Are we witnessing a new form of “regime change” or a return to old patterns of U.S. imperialism? And, crucially, what are the prospects for a just, democratic future for Venezuelans when the nation’s sovereignty itself seems in question? Join Professor Alejandro Velasco, historian of modern Venezuela at New York University, for a deep examination of the historical forces that shaped Venezuela’s present and the larger regional and global implications of this pivotal moment. This event is on March 11, 2026, 5:30 PM ET, at Kaneff Tower Room 519, Keele Campus | York University.

The RRN Research Digest provides a synopsis of recent research on refugee and forced migration issues from entities associated with the RRN and others.

You can download the digest in PDF format here: RRN Research Digest

NEW RESEARCH AND PUBLICATIONS

Nishimura, L. S. (2025). Climate change, human rights, and Adaptive Mobility. Oxford University Press. Open access book. The potential for climate change to cause vast human movement is a major global issue. Dominant approaches to climate-related migration take mobility as the starting point, exploring legal frameworks that tend to provide protection for migrants only after they move and overlooking measures that could help avoid forced movement in the first place. In contrast, Climate Change, Human Rights, and Adaptive Mobility provides a new conceptual and legal approach to human mobility in the context of climate change, one that seeks to compel and shape more proactive, anticipatory action. The book anchors its arguments in the international climate change regime, turning to obligations on adaptation found in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Paris Agreement.

Kaufmann, J., & Fransen, S. (2026). ‘Burdens and threats’: Displaced populations in Eastern Africa’s climate agenda. Climate Justice in Action, 192–211. Open access. In this chapter, the authors study the inclusion of displaced populations in climate change-related laws and policies in Eastern Africa. While previous studies have highlighted the vulnerability of these populations to climate risks, there is limited research on the specific policy responses aimed at addressing these challenges, particularly in Eastern Africa. This chapter fills this gap by offering a comparative assessment of national climate-related laws and strategies, shedding light on the extent to which these policies account for displaced populations. By focusing on a region that has been under represented in the climate adaptation–displacement discourse, this chapter offers new empirical insights and enhances our understanding of the policy landscape governing the resilience of displaced communities in climate-sensitive areas. Based on our findings, the authors argue that there is a significant gap in the integration of these populations into formal climate-related policies in the region. This oversight is crucial for building the resilience of displaced populations, and calls for more targeted and inclusive climate strategies that consider the unique vulnerabilities of these communities in Eastern Africa.

McKenzie, E., Borschmann, R., Saling, L., & Hedrick, K. (2026). Hunger strikes among asylum seekers in Australian immigration detention: Prevalence, precipitants, characteristics, and management. BMC Public Health. Open access. Hunger strikes are commonly reported in places of detention, and Australia has some of the most restrictive immigration detention policies globally. Despite this, little is known about hunger strikes among immigration detainees in Australia. The authors aimed to examine the prevalence, precipitants, characteristics, and management of hunger strikes among asylum seekers in Australian onshore immigration detention. The findings highlight concerningly high rates of hunger strikes among detained asylum seekers in Australia compared to other detained populations, with protest the most common trigger. Hunger strike management was inconsistent with international best practice. These findings highlight the deleterious impact of immigration detention on the physical and mental health of those detained. Further investigation, and policy and practice development consistent with ethical and human rights frameworks are warranted.

Moosa-Mitha, M., Varcoe, C., Holmes, C., Wallace, B., Hudspith, M., Moor, G., & Craig, K. (2026). How encounters with health professionals reiterate experiences of coloniality for refugees. Health Psychology, 45(1), 63. Physical pain is typically perceived as a raw sensory experience by providers and pain scholars. However, for decolonial theorists, the meaning of pain is derived from the context of colonialization and understood as a multidimensional subjective experience with psychological, emotional, cognitive, and sociopolitical features. The purpose of this field study was to acquire first-hand experiential narratives of racialized refugees living with chronic pain. In this article, the authors undertake a decolonial analysis of the meaning of pain based on the narratives of refugee study participants, including their experiences of encounters with health care practitioners.

Ullah, S. A. (2026). Societal impacts of the Rohingya refugee presence in Bangladesh’s border communities: Tensions and transformations. Societal Impacts, 7, 100168. Open access. This study examines how the attitudes of local host communities in Teknaf-Ukhia, Bangladesh, have changed in response to the large-scale influx of Rohingya refugees that started in August 2017. Refugee crises, especially in developing countries, often become long-lasting, putting sustained pressure on host communities with limited resources. Results show a notable shift in public sentiment, from initial sympathy to increased frustration and tension later. Major concerns among host communities include forest degradation, wage competition, rising living costs, and heightened insecurity.

REPORTS AND POLICY BRIEFS

IOM Warns of Deepening Needs as Over Three Million People Return to Sudan. (2026). IOM. More than three million people have returned to their areas of origin in Sudan, despite the extensive damage to housing, basic services, and vital infrastructure. The International Organization for Migration (IOM) is calling for sustained funding to meet the rising needs in areas of return and to support solutions that can help end the cycle of displacement.

Mapping Report on Transitioning into Adulthood. (2026). EUAA. This report provides an overview of possible actions to strengthen support for young asylum seekers and refugees within the framework of the Common European Asylum System. It also offers key recommendations for determining and reception authorities on how to enhance interventions for children transitioning into adulthood, as well as for those who have recently made this transition.

Navigating citizenship in Moldova: Legal changes and rights-based implications. (2026). Norwegian Refugee Council. This briefing note summarises the key amendments to Moldova’s Citizenship Law that entered into force in December 2025. It analyses the legal and rights-based implications for refugees, displaced persons from Ukraine, stateless individuals, children, and long-term residents, and outlines priority advocacy actions to ensure inclusive access to citizenship and prevent exclusion.

“No One Cares About Us Anymore”: How U.S. Aid Cuts Have Intensified the Crisis for Women and Girls in Afghanistan by Devon Cone. (2026). Refugees International. In 2025, the Trump administration shut down the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and abruptly halted most U.S. foreign aid programs. The process was poorly planned and ideologically driven, with a particular focus targeting what the administration viewed as gender-related activities. These cuts have recklessly derailed critical activities supporting the safety and well-being of women and girls around the world. The administration also stripped gender-related language from federal documents and multilateral commitments. The result has been a direct erosion of hard-won global standards on women’s protection and rights. There is arguably nowhere where the consequences are more severe than in Afghanistan, where the Trump administration canceled all aid programming – a decision that advanced and deepened the reach of the Taliban’s system of gender apartheid.

Venezuela after Maduro: mixed migration implications of a sudden regime rupture by Bram Frouws, Roberto Forin, & Simon Tomasi. (2026). Mixed Migration Centre. The abrupt removal of President Nicolás Maduro by United States forces in early January 2026 represents a profound political rupture in Venezuela with regional implications. While reactions have been sharply polarised, ranging from international condemnation to open celebration among parts of the Venezuelan diaspora, the implications for migration dynamics remain uncertain.

NEWS AND BLOG POSTS

Afghan migrants stranded in Pakistan after the US suspends refugee resettlement by Mehr Mumtaz, January 29, 2026. The Conversation. In January 2025, Seema received an email from the International Organization for Migration saying that her flight from Pakistan to the United States, which she and her family were booked on after months of extensive interviewing and background checks by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, had been canceled. Their lives now hinge on policy choices that will determine whether the United States honors the obligations it made during two decades of intervention that reshaped Afghan lives and livelihoods.

Australia tarnished by persistent racism, refugee abuse, February 4, 2026. The Canberra Times. The poor treatment of refugees, systemic discrimination and racism have tarred Australia’s human rights record, despite freedoms in the nation being largely upheld. Racial and ethnic discrimination – including anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, anti-Arab and anti-Palestinian racism – was increasing, as was racism towards Indian and Indigenous communities, the Human Rights Watch 2026 world report found.

Commission presents a five-year strategy on migration, January 29, 2026. Migration and Home Affairs. On 29 January, the European Commission presented the first European Asylum and Migration Management Strategy. It sets out the EU’s political objectives on asylum and migration, with concrete priorities for the next five years. The newly adopted Strategy emphasises the commitment and ongoing work to put in place an EU framework that is fair and firm, and that effectively manages migration together with partner countries, while remaining true to European values. It sets out the way forward to achieve three main objectives: preventing illegal migration and breaking the business of criminal smuggling networks; protecting people fleeing war and persecution, while preventing abuse of the asylum system; and attracting talent to the EU to boost the competitiveness of the EU’s economy.

Federal judge bars Trump administration from detaining lawful refugees in Minnesota by Chloe Rosen, January 29, 2026. CBS News. A federal judge on Wednesday temporarily barred the Trump administration from detaining refugees in Minnesota who do not yet have green cards, following a bid by the administration to reexamine thousands of refugees’ cases.

The temporary restraining order was brought about by the International Refugee Assistance Project and other organizations, on behalf of a group of refugees who have been detained by immigration authorities or fear detention.

Rohingya Genocide Case Moves to Judgment: World Court Concludes Hearings in Gambia’s Landmark Action Against Myanmar by David Esposito, January 29, 2026. Human Rights Watch. On January 29, the three-week hearings on the merits of Gambia’s genocide case against Myanmar before the International Court of Justice came to a close. The case, filed in 2019, alleges that Myanmar’s atrocities against ethnic Rohingya in 2016 and 2017 violate the Genocide Convention of 1948. During the hearings, Gambia argued that the extreme brutality, pervasive sexual violence, targeting of children, and widespread burning and destruction of villages by Myanmar’s military against the Rohingya population are among the indicators of genocidal intent: to destroy the Rohingya, in whole or in part, on the basis of their identity as a national, ethnic, racial or religious group.

Why Iran keeps turning off the internet during mass protests by Niloofar Hooman, January 28, 2026. The Conversation. What began on Dec. 28 in Tehran as a revolt against economic hardship and the collapse of the national currency quickly spread across dozens of other Iranian cities and provinces. People from diverse socioeconomic, religious and ethnic backgrounds joined what has become the largest anti-regime protest since the 1979 revolution. Chants of “death to the dictator” and “death to Khamenei” echoed far beyond Tehran’s Grand Bazaar. As a response, the government shut off all internet services, leaving roughly 92 million Iranians in a digital blackout since Jan. 8.

EVENTS, RESOURCES, DIGITAL AND SOCIAL MEDIA

MOEBIUS seminar, “Sovereignty ordering migrations inside European borders. Uses v. ethics. MOEBIUS. The seminar will feature a lecture by Thomas Gammeltoft-Hansen, Professor of Law and Director of the Center of Excellence for Global Mobility Law at the University of Copenhagen. His talk will focus on the theme, “Free Movement vs External Border Control? Reframing Schengen as Legal Infrastructure.” This is an online event on February 13, 2026, from 10 a.m. to 12 p.m, CET.

Podcast: Is Climate-Vulnerable Africa Prepared for Increased Displacement?. Migration Policy Institute. Africa may be the most climate-vulnerable region of the world. How prepared is the continent for a future of increased displacement? This episode of the Changing Climate, Changing Migration podcast speaks with Aimée-Noël Mbiyozo, a senior research consultant at the South Africa-based Institute for Security Studies.

Recording: The Role of Counselling & Reintegration Support in Shaping Migrants’ Return Decisions. Migration Policy Institute. Featuring a study on the role that counselling and reintegration programs can play in shaping migrants’ return decisions, this webinar examines how timing of such interventions, counselling approaches, and collaboration with trusted origin-country partners can help make these programs more effective. Four speakers will comment on the study of nearly 118,000 case files from the Dutch Government’s Repatriation and Departure Service. 

WEBINAR: 2026 State of Play Assessment on Statelessness in Europe. European Network on Statelessness. On 25th February, their annual webinar provides a state of play on statelessness in Europe and an opportunity to learn about the latest law and policy developments. In conversation with experts working in different countries and community members with lived experience, the network will present their annual assessment of key trends on statelessness in Europe. They will also present an analysis of statelessness in Armenia, following its addition to the Statelessness Index last month, and updated data for several other countries. This is an online event at 12:30 – 13:15 CET.

The RRN Research Digest provides a synopsis of recent research on refugee and forced migration issues from entities associated with the RRN and others.

You can download the digest in PDF format here: RRN Research Digest

NEW RESEARCH AND PUBLICATIONS

Dew, A. (2026). Refugee Journeys to Australia: Safety, Security, and Support for People from Syria and Iraq with Disabilities. Bloomsbury Publishing, New York. This book highlights the experiences of people with disability and their family members from Syrian and Iraqi refugee backgrounds who have resettled in Australia over the past decade. Use code GLR AT8 for a 35% discount on this title on the linked site.

Wagana, M. (2026). “13: Environmental Justice, Climate Change and Food Security: Interventions with Refugee Children in Western Uganda”. In Climate Justice in Action. Bristol, UK: Bristol University Press. Open access book chapter. Focusing on the Young African Leaders Initiative – Green Refugees Community Project, this chapter explores the interconnected issues of climate change, food insecurity and environmental injustice affecting refugee children in Uganda. The author investigates how these factors impact the well-being of refugee children and examines the role of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and external partners, as well as constitutional and judiciary responses to addressing these challenges through climate interventions.

Atay, E., & Bayraktaroglu, S. (2026). Refugees, Family Dynamics, and Resilience: Integrating Systemic Disruptions and Individual Coping Mechanisms. Journal of Family Issues, 0(0). Migration reshapes family dynamics, emotional well-being, and identity negotiation, disrupting caregiving structures, communication patterns, and intergenerational relationships. This study examines how refugees and their families navigate these systemic disruptions and employ coping mechanisms to foster resilience. The findings contribute to family research by bridging systemic and individual responses, offering policy implications for expediting family reunification, developing culturally responsive mental health services, and designing intergenerational integration programs. This study underscores the need for holistic, family-centered migration policies and support systems to enhance refugee family well-being and long-term resilience.

Mathis, C. M., Huslage, M., & Held, M. L. (2026). Traveling Together, Traveling Alone: Experiences of Violence and Danger for Migrating Children and Families in the US–Mexico Borderlands. Social Sciences, 15(1), 23. Open access. Decisions to migrate are based on individual and family assessments of risk and opportunity, shaped by economic conditions, risks and experiences of violence, resources, and networks, which interact with personal factors and opportunity. During the journey, migrating people may encounter threats to their safety and wellbeing from both human and natural hazards. Factors that influenced migration included economic stressors such as loss of job and poverty, witnessing or experiencing interpersonal violence or state violence such as kidnapping or threats to self or family, and environmental factors such as natural disasters. Approximately a third of participants traveled with their children, parents or siblings. Younger migrants and migrating people traveling with children reported significantly higher likelihood of encountering dangers during migration. Implications for supporting migrating children and families who have encountered violence and trauma are discussed, as well as limitations of the research.

Taha, D. M. (2025). A dance of virtue and protection: Femininity and masculinity negotiations in Arab cross-national marriage between Syrian refugee women and Egyptian men. Comparative Migration Studies, 14(1). This article examines how gender identities are relationally constructed and strategically negotiated in marriages between Syrian refugee women and Egyptian men in Egypt. It introduces the concept of negotiated femininities to describe how displaced women navigate structural vulnerability through context-sensitive gender performances, while men enact protective masculinities centered on provision and moral authority. Although Syrian women are idealized for their perceived virtues of docility and domesticity, their narratives expose tensions that both challenge and affirm ideals of hegemonic masculinity. Framed as a “dance of virtue and protection,” the paper contributes to debates on Arab masculinities, inter-Arab and cross-national marriage, refugee-host relations, and the gendered politics of displacement, highlighting marriage as a site of complex negotiation, reciprocal gender role formation, and a pathway for self-resettlement.

Weima, Y., Biorklund, L., Bose, P., Culcasi, K., Brankamp, H., & Hyndman, J. (2026). Jennifer Hyndman’s managing displacement, 25 Years on. Political Geography, 103484. Open access. March 2025 marked 25 years since the publication of Jennifer Hyndman’s Managing Displacement: Refugees and the Politics of Humanitarianism (2000), a landmark book which has shaped critical research on forced migration and humanitarian politics, and political geography more broadly. In Managing Displacement, Hyndman drew both on her professional experience in humanitarian settings in eastern Africa, and on ethnographic research in aid offices from Geneva to the Dadaab camp complex in Kenya, to scrutinize the taken-for-granted ways that states and aid organizations sought to manage displacement at a variety of scales. Her descriptions of refugee camps, analyses of the humanitarian regime, and reflections on positionality, ethics, and the practicalities of research in the aid landscapes of eastern Africa have resonated with scholars working in displacement contexts around the world. For this article, political and feminist geographers were invited to reflect on the continued relevance of Hyndman’s foundational work, to consider how the book has shaped contemporary academic debates on forced migration, and to speculate on future directions of critical, feminist research on refugees and the politics of humanitarianism.

REPORTS AND POLICY BRIEFS

Educational attainment and employment among immigrants with disabilities by Christoph Schimmele, Allison Leanage, Maciej Karpinski, Jing Shen, and Rubab Arim. (2025). Statistics Canada. Using the 2022 Canadian Survey on Disability, this study examined differences in educational attainment and employment between immigrants with and without disabilities. Immigrant men with and without disabilities had similar levels of educational attainment, while immigrant women with disabilities had lower levels of educational attainment than immigrant women without disabilities. Immigrant men and women with disabilities had lower levels of employment than their counterparts without disabilities. Much of the gap in employment between immigrants with and without disabilities was found at lower levels of education. Among those with a bachelor’s degree or higher, there was a smaller gap in employment between immigrant men with and without disabilities, and no difference in employment between immigrant women with and without disabilities. These patterns in employment were mostly similar to those between Canadian-born persons with and without disabilities.

Fragmented asylum: fault lines in regional responses to the Sudanese displacement crisis by Margaret Monyani & Ottilia Anna Maunganidze. (2025). Institute for Security Studies (ISS). The conflict in Sudan has triggered one of Africa’s most urgent displacement crises, straining fragile asylum systems in Egypt, South Sudan and Chad. This report exposes the gaps between legal commitments and lived realities, where refugee protection is patchy and human rights remain elusive. Drawing on field interviews and policy analysis, the report offers practical recommendations to transform fragmented responses into a resilient, rights-based regional protection system.

Identity management manual. (2026). IOM UN Migration. This manual delves into the complexities and innovations in identity management, offering in-depth analyses on legal frameworks, technological advancements and best practices. With contributions from leading experts and organizations, it serves as a comprehensive guide for policymakers, practitioners and stakeholders committed to strengthening identity systems worldwide.

Overview of the Implementation of Safe Country Concepts. Situational Update No. 24. (2026). EUAA. This report presents the state of play of EU+ countries implementing safe country concepts in the processing of asylum applications. The biannual overview is published in January and July. This report covers July-December 2025.

Study visit to Sweden on good practices in upholding the rights of asylum-seeking and refugee women and girls. (2026). ECRE. ECRE and a number of its partner organisations from across Europe carried out a study visit to Stockholm, Sweden in June 2025 as part of an analysis of national practices in the protection of self-identified asylum-seeking and refugee women and girls. The specific aim of the visit, which was organised within the ‘Empowerment and Protection of Migrant Women’ (AMAL) project, was to assess how Sweden’s legal framework, asylum procedures, reception systems and civil society structures respond to the specific needs of self-identified women and girls. Drawing on extensive exchanges with national authorities, civil society actors, legal practitioners and academia, the report provides an in-depth picture of both progress and emerging risks. It underscores that even though Sweden continues to host a strong ecosystem of actors committed to supporting asylum-seeking and refugee women and girls, the restrictive policy climate is increasingly shaping the extent to which these protections can be upheld in practice.

NEWS AND BLOG POSTS

AD1108: South Africans oppose immigration, express mixed attitudes toward foreigners by Asafika Mpako and Stephen Ndoma, January 10, 2026. AFRO Barometer. In South Africa, immigrants often bear the brunt of public anger for the country’s high crime rates, economic hardships, and failing public service delivery, despite a lack of credible evidence to support these perceptions. The most recent Afrobarometer findings reveal that a majority of South Africans oppose the free movement of people across international borders in Southern Africa. Seven in 10 respondents say immigrants have a negative impact on the economy, and even larger majorities want fewer immigrants and refugees, or none whatsoever, to come into the country.

As Money Goes out for Climate-Related Loss and Damage, Displaced Communities Stand to Benefit by Shana Tabak and Alejandro Martin Rodriguez, January 9, 2026. Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. With the Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage scheduled to make its first distribution in 2026, countries and members of the fund’s board have an opportunity to prioritize human mobility.

Motherhood under Surveillance: The Gendered Violence of ICE’s Alternatives to Detention by Juliana R. S. and Gabriella Sanchez, January 21, 2026. Border Criminologies. The arrival of Donald Trump to the White House in January 2025 marked a dramatic, yet not unexpected shift in US migration policy and enforcement. Over the past year, while encounters at the US–Mexico border have fallen sharply, agents for US Immigration and Custom Enforcement (ICE) have apprehended thousands of people across the country, disproportionately targeting racialised communities and relying on excessive use of force. At least 40 people are known to have died in ICE custody – six of them in the first weeks of 2026 alone. This blog post was co-written with Juliana R. S., the pseudonym chosen by a young Venezuelan woman and mother of two young children who was admitted into the US in the city of El Paso, Texas, where she has lived since 2024. She was placed under ICE’s alternatives to detention (ATD) program, known locally as ISAP – Intensive Supervision Appearance Program– upon her arrival.

The Mass Deportations of Lithuanians during the Two Soviet Occupations by Tomas Balkelis, January 8, 2026. Researching Internal Displacement. This brief article highlights the lesser-known deportations of people from Lithuania conducted in 1940-1950s by the Soviet authorities. The unlawful Soviet actions led to the forced displacement, imprisonment, and deaths of thousands of Lithuanians within the Soviet Union, resulting in significant shifts in political, cultural, and economic life in Lithuanian society.

What Iran’s latest protests tell us about power, memory and resistance by Shirin Khayambashi, January 18, 2026. The Conversation. Iranians have been expressing their dissatisfaction with the current regime for decades. And although the recent protests were initiated in response to the dire economic crisis, the country’s future will depend more on whether authoritarian repression and political fragmentation — both inside its borders and across the diaspora — can be overcome.

EVENTS, RESOURCES, DIGITAL AND SOCIAL MEDIA

Talk: Bordering on Indifference: Immigration Agents Negotiating Race and Morality. UCLA. In “Bordering on Indifference: Immigration Agents Negotiating Race and Morality” (Princeton University Press), Irene I. Vega draws on interviews with ninety immigration agents—Border Patrol Agents and ICE Deportation Officers—to examine the institutional production of indifference in the U.S. immigration enforcement system. She argues that indifference, understood most simply as apathy or detachment, is both a taught bureaucratic strategy that agents use to look away from the most conflicting aspects of their work, as well as a major product of their efforts to cultivate a moral sense of self. In effect, indifference is one of the mechanisms that protects the status quo in immigration agents like the U.S. Border Patrol and ICE. This is a hybrid event that will be on January 30, 2026, 3:00PM – 4:30PM ET.

Collection of Essays: Emerging Perspectives: Essay competition 2025. Mixed Migration Centre. The Emerging Perspectives 2025 collection features a curated selection of essays from the Mixed Migration Centre’s (MMC) annual essay competition. This year’s competition invited young researchers, writers, and thinkers from the Global South to explore the critical theme of “migration in the context of geopolitical turmoil”. Selected from a record-breaking pool of over 500 submissions, the essays in this collection represent the 20 finalists and runners-up. These works offer original, analytical, and deeply personal insights into how shifting global orders, foreign interventions, and economic instability are reshaping human mobility.

Podcast: Stories of Queer Iranians. NQIfFM. This podcast series is part of the project titled Negotiating Queer Identities Following Forced Migration. The project explores the experiences of individuals who have left Iran to escape persecution and discrimination based on their sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, or sex characteristics.

Presentation: Topic Trauma-Informing the Asylum Process: Guidelines and Recommendations Co-developed with Young People Seeking Asylum. ESRC Centre for Society and Mental Health. Unaccompanied children and young people seeking asylum in the UK experience hardships and challenges when accessing support, social services and applying for asylum. Navigating the asylum system and the asylum process itself can negatively impact the mental health of young people seeking asylum, in some cases it can even cause trauma or re-traumatise them. This presentation draws on empirical findings based on Albanian young people’s lived experience of the UK’s asylum process. This is an online event on February 11, 2026, 4:00 PM – 5:30 PM GMT.

Seminar: Asylum Frontiers: The Impacts of Border Externalization in Guatemala. UCLA. The last decade and a half have seen a dramatic increase in the outsourcing of border-making processes to countries in the Global South. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in several externalized asylum processing and refugee resettlement sites (including the Republic of Nauru and Jordan), but specifically in Guatemala, this talk looks at these recent developments through the lens of ‘resource frontiers.’ Presenter Julia Morris is Associate Professor of International Studies at the University of North Carolina Wilmington. This hybrid event is on February 10, 2026, 3:30 PM ET.